Population dips by more than 10K
Camp Fire’s impact evident in decline; surrounding counties saw inflated growth rates
Butte County lost more than 10,000 residents due to the Camp Fire, according to estimates released last week by the state.
That was according to an annual report by the Department of Finance that calculates county populations from July 1 of one year to July 1 of the next.
The latest report, from 2018 to 2019, Showed Butte’s population dipping from 227,353 to 216,965. That’s a loss of 10,388 people, or 4.57 percent of the population.
Part of the loss — 142 — came because that many more people died than were born in the county.
But the state estimates 10,411 residents left Butte County for elsewhere in the United States. It attributes the change to the Camp Fire on Nov. 8, 2018, that killed 85 people, and also destroyed 6.5 percent of the housing supply in the county.
The outward flow was partially offset by 165 people immigrating here from other countries.
The population loss by num
bers and percentage was the highest of the 58 counties in the state.
Conversely, the counties surrounding Butte had inflated growth rates, all far above the state average of 0.35 percent.
Sutter was the fastest growing county in the state by percentage, adding 2,243 people, or 2.21 percent. Most of that — 1,364 people — consisted of people moving in from elsewhere in the United States, most of them likely from Butte County.
Glenn County was No. 3 by percentage, adding 442 people, or 1.54 percent. The state estimated 365 of those people were “domestic migrants,” a category that would include those displaced by the fire.
By comparison, between July 1, 2017 and July 1, 2018, Glenn grew 0.48 percent.
Tehama County grew by 1.12 percent, adding 725 people. Yuba County also grew 1.12 percent, adding 866 people. Colusa grew 1.00 percent, with 223 new residents.
Even Plumas County, which has been losing population since 2016, was in the plus column this past year. It added 156 people, a 0.83 percent growth rate.
As a state, California added 141,300 between July 1, 2019 and July 1, 2019, for a total of 39,959,095, one of the lowest growth rates since 1900, according to a Department of Finance press release.
More people left the state for elsewhere in the United States than migrated here, with 197,594 moving out. However births outpaced deaths by 180,786, and 158,118 people immigrated to the state from other nations.