Escape from Paradise
(Author's note: This blog is usually used just as a personal record of our travels. I posted this article here only because it was a convenient place to put it.)
47,000 people fled Paradise on November 8, 2018.
I went into Paradise.
To rescue a cat.
There were 47,000 harrowing stories of escape that day. This is the story of one person - and one cat.
My wife, the cat ("Kitty" - yes, I'm not very imaginative), and I lived in a beautiful small canyon near Pearson and Pentz on the east side of Paradise. We lived in a virtual tree house - our home suspended 25 feet above the canyon in the middle of the tree canopy. We spent over half the year living on our deck, watching turkeys, deer, foxes, and yes, black bears amble through our yard.
It was truly a forest idyll.
The canyon we lived on was subject to vicious "Jarbo Gap" winds during the fall and winter - blustery gale-force downslope katabatic winds that typically arise around midnight and blow - sometimes with frightening force - until late morning. They are similar to the notorious Santa Ana winds of southern California.
The night of November 6th was a particularly windy night, with the wind gusts blowing over furniture on our deck. The night of the 7th didn't seem quite as bad, and the 8th dawned clear, cold and breezy.
I said goodbye to the cat as I set the house alarm system.
Camp Creek Road is near the tiny "town" of Pulga. Pulga is 10 miles as the crow flies, and 20 miles by road, from our house. "I'll need to keep an eye on that one," I thought, "it could be a problem later today."
Without even blinking, I told my boss that I had to leave to get the cat, grabbed my jacket and left. I had no conception of what I was heading into.
When I walked out of the building I was stunned by the ominous sky overhead. Just an hour earlier it had been cloudless and crystal clear. Now, an angry black band blotted out the sun and most of the sky. I ran to my car, heart pounding. We've all seen pictures of that sky. It was a hundred times more terrifying in person.
I left campus around 8:10 and raced up the hill. There was a lot of traffic going up the Skyway (the main road into - and out of - Paradise), but at that time, very few people coming down. The gravity of the situation had yet to dawn on the people of Paradise.
When I got on Pearson Road (one of the main east-west arteries in town), it was still two-way traffic, though ambulances raced on either side of the road as Feather River Hospital was being evacuated. But I didn't really begin to grasp the insanity of what was happening until I passed Paradise Elementary school. It was a chaos of cars and people as parents frantically picked up their kids. The fire still seemed miles away.
After Clark, Pearson narrowed to one lane each way. The opposite side began to back up with people trying to evacuate, and ambulances continued to race - sirens blaring - down my side of the road. But I made it to our street.
I could hear mysterious popping sounds on the other side of our canyon when I stepped outside. I would understand what they were a few hours later.
Our street was very small and I'd seen a number of cars cut through it, trying to take a short cut from Pentz to Pearson. I figured there might be congestion that way, but I knew another way, a back way out via Edgewood Rd.
When I got to Edgewood, there were six cars in line to get to Pearson, so - incredibly stupidly - I went back to Stearns. There were at least 10 to 15 cars backed up there, so I turned around again, and went back to Edgewood. By the time I got there, there were at least 20 cars in front of me, and we weren't moving, even though both sides of Pearson were now evacuating to the west.
By the time we neared Pearson it was as black as the darkest night. There was no power, and the only light came from the headlights of the cars crammed into the barely moving line. I tried calling my wife, but only got through briefly. I would call her dozens of times in the 4 hours to come.
Kitty cried plaintively from her cage in the back seat.
Just as I finally reached Pearson, the people in the cars behind me began frantically honking their horns and yelling, "The fire is here!! The fire is right here!!" I watched as a house on the other side of Pearson caught fire and embers fell all around. People began abandoning their cars and running. The fire was literally upon us.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, an old Toyota Land Cruiser burst through the trees and crashed into the ditch on the side of the road right next to me. Though it was pitch black, I could see the driver's frantic face in the the headlights - only feet from me as he gunned his engine trying to get loose. Had he managed to get free, he would have plowed into my driver-side door. He had panicked as the fire consumed Edgewood and cut through a yard in a desperate attempt to escape. I inched forward to get clear of him.
Days later, I found this photo in a Washington Post article on the fire. Apparently he survived.
Though all the chaos, two thoughts kept going through my mind:
First: "This can't be the same fire. This has to be a different fire. There's no way a fire can get from Pulga to Paradise so fast. No way. Particularly when it's only 58° outside." In the 1980's, I had been a fire behavior researcher for the U.S. Forest Service Fire Lab in Riverside, and I knew my fire behavior - or so I thought. This kind of fire wasn't remotely possible.
Second: "You run, you die." People were leaving their cars left and right, but I knew that you couldn't outrun the fire, and outside the car, you were more subject to heat and smoke inhalation. I stayed.
It took another half hour to reach Clark Rd., where we finally emerged from the trees and the blackness of night, and Pearson widened to four lanes. By this time I had managed to get my wife (who was at the bottom of the hill in Chico at the Starbucks) on the phone. "I think I've made it," I told her, "We're out of the trees."
We made reasonably good time down Pearson to Skyway; traffic was moving and there were no signs of flames. At least, that is, until we approached Neal Rd.
As we neared the intersection, I could see that the whole left side of Skyway was on fire. Flames engulfed 60 foot tall pine trees. Too late, I realized that the uphill lanes closest to the fire were closed and they were forcing us onto Neal Rd.
I immediately knew this was a mistake. Neal is a narrow, tree choked road, a single lane each way. I didn't want to be in the trees again.
It became pitch black again. And then I could see the fire.
It came up the canyon on our right. I watched as the trees caught fire. I watched as the house next to my car started to smoke, as the eaves caught fire, and as it became totally engulfed. I listened to the popping of propane tanks and spray cans as the house burned. And I finally understood the sounds I had heard as I left our house two and a half hours before.
And still we didn't move.
Once again, people began to abandon their cars and run. I watched a nurse get out of her car in front of me and hug - crying - a women from the car next her.
I tried not to panic, but it was getting grim. There were cars to the left of me, cars in front of me, cars behind me, and flames to the right of me. The popping got louder and closer. I sat there, trapped, just waiting to be burned alive.
Reception was very poor, but on and off I was able to get through to my wife. I told her that I loved her and that I might not make it. We cried. She said that as long as we kept talking, I would make it. I wasn't so sure. I felt that I was saying goodbye. If we didn't move, I knew I was going to die.
Within 10 minutes we were out of the trees, and I could see that the entire canyon between Neal and Skyway was a sea of fire. It was an unbelievable scene, but we were moving and we were out of the fire.
But I was alive, and so was the cat.
I finally met up with my wife at the Casa Ramos in Willows around 2:00. We were lucky. We were all alive.
47,000 people fled Paradise on November 8, 2018.
I went into Paradise.
To rescue a cat.
There were 47,000 harrowing stories of escape that day. This is the story of one person - and one cat.
My wife, the cat ("Kitty" - yes, I'm not very imaginative), and I lived in a beautiful small canyon near Pearson and Pentz on the east side of Paradise. We lived in a virtual tree house - our home suspended 25 feet above the canyon in the middle of the tree canopy. We spent over half the year living on our deck, watching turkeys, deer, foxes, and yes, black bears amble through our yard.
 |
| The forest from our deck |
 |
| Our house and our deck. |
 |
| The house in winter. |
It was truly a forest idyll.
The canyon we lived on was subject to vicious "Jarbo Gap" winds during the fall and winter - blustery gale-force downslope katabatic winds that typically arise around midnight and blow - sometimes with frightening force - until late morning. They are similar to the notorious Santa Ana winds of southern California.
The night of November 6th was a particularly windy night, with the wind gusts blowing over furniture on our deck. The night of the 7th didn't seem quite as bad, and the 8th dawned clear, cold and breezy.
6:30 AM
As usual, my wife headed down the hill before me to her job on the other side of the Sacramento Valley in Willows. I left - also as usual - at 6:30 for my job at Chico State. I had no idea that at the very moment I was leaving home, the fire that would wipe an entire city off the map was being sparked.I said goodbye to the cat as I set the house alarm system.
7:00 AM
When I arrived at work at 7:00, I noticed an alert from CalFire of a fire in the Feather River canyon:
Camp Creek Road is near the tiny "town" of Pulga. Pulga is 10 miles as the crow flies, and 20 miles by road, from our house. "I'll need to keep an eye on that one," I thought, "it could be a problem later today."
8:00 AM
At 8:00, while I was setting up for a meeting, I got a local news notification on my phone, "Paradise being evacuated," was all I saw.Without even blinking, I told my boss that I had to leave to get the cat, grabbed my jacket and left. I had no conception of what I was heading into.
When I walked out of the building I was stunned by the ominous sky overhead. Just an hour earlier it had been cloudless and crystal clear. Now, an angry black band blotted out the sun and most of the sky. I ran to my car, heart pounding. We've all seen pictures of that sky. It was a hundred times more terrifying in person.
 |
| https://www.chicoer.com/2018/11/08/highway-70-being-shut-down-wildfire-in-feather-river-canyon/ |
I left campus around 8:10 and raced up the hill. There was a lot of traffic going up the Skyway (the main road into - and out of - Paradise), but at that time, very few people coming down. The gravity of the situation had yet to dawn on the people of Paradise.
When I got on Pearson Road (one of the main east-west arteries in town), it was still two-way traffic, though ambulances raced on either side of the road as Feather River Hospital was being evacuated. But I didn't really begin to grasp the insanity of what was happening until I passed Paradise Elementary school. It was a chaos of cars and people as parents frantically picked up their kids. The fire still seemed miles away.
After Clark, Pearson narrowed to one lane each way. The opposite side began to back up with people trying to evacuate, and ambulances continued to race - sirens blaring - down my side of the road. But I made it to our street.
8:46 AM
As I turned off the chaos of Pearson onto our tiny street, all seemed sleepy and quiet. The sky was smoky, but it was cool and calm. I went into the house, greeted the cat, changed clothes (it was 58° outside, and I wanted something heavier than a dress shirt), and packed an extra bag of clothes - mostly t-shirts. I remembered that we had bought sprinklers for our deck after talking about the Santa Rosa fires. I went outside, tried to brush dry leaves off our deck with my bare hands, turned on the sprinklers, scooped up the cat, set the alarm, and left the house.I could hear mysterious popping sounds on the other side of our canyon when I stepped outside. I would understand what they were a few hours later.
9:00 AM
I had been home for exactly 13 minutes and 50 seconds. |
| Screenshot of our alarm app. |
Our street was very small and I'd seen a number of cars cut through it, trying to take a short cut from Pentz to Pearson. I figured there might be congestion that way, but I knew another way, a back way out via Edgewood Rd.
When I got to Edgewood, there were six cars in line to get to Pearson, so - incredibly stupidly - I went back to Stearns. There were at least 10 to 15 cars backed up there, so I turned around again, and went back to Edgewood. By the time I got there, there were at least 20 cars in front of me, and we weren't moving, even though both sides of Pearson were now evacuating to the west.
9:26 AM
The sky darkened. We crept forward. The line behind me lengthened. Edgewood was a 2 mile long street with a single exit - Pearson Rd. When I took this picture at 9:26, the fire was already starting to consume the south end of Edgewood where 5 people would be trapped and burned to death. They were the first fatalities of many to come. |
| Looking south on Edgewood, where 5 people would be trapped by the flames. |
By the time we neared Pearson it was as black as the darkest night. There was no power, and the only light came from the headlights of the cars crammed into the barely moving line. I tried calling my wife, but only got through briefly. I would call her dozens of times in the 4 hours to come.
Kitty cried plaintively from her cage in the back seat.
Just as I finally reached Pearson, the people in the cars behind me began frantically honking their horns and yelling, "The fire is here!! The fire is right here!!" I watched as a house on the other side of Pearson caught fire and embers fell all around. People began abandoning their cars and running. The fire was literally upon us.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, an old Toyota Land Cruiser burst through the trees and crashed into the ditch on the side of the road right next to me. Though it was pitch black, I could see the driver's frantic face in the the headlights - only feet from me as he gunned his engine trying to get loose. Had he managed to get free, he would have plowed into my driver-side door. He had panicked as the fire consumed Edgewood and cut through a yard in a desperate attempt to escape. I inched forward to get clear of him.
Days later, I found this photo in a Washington Post article on the fire. Apparently he survived.
 |
| The crashed Land Cruiser on Pearson. |
Though all the chaos, two thoughts kept going through my mind:
First: "This can't be the same fire. This has to be a different fire. There's no way a fire can get from Pulga to Paradise so fast. No way. Particularly when it's only 58° outside." In the 1980's, I had been a fire behavior researcher for the U.S. Forest Service Fire Lab in Riverside, and I knew my fire behavior - or so I thought. This kind of fire wasn't remotely possible.
Second: "You run, you die." People were leaving their cars left and right, but I knew that you couldn't outrun the fire, and outside the car, you were more subject to heat and smoke inhalation. I stayed.
9:59 AM
It took us an hour to travel the seven tenths of a mile to Sawmill Rd., but we were still ahead of the fire, if barely. I actually don't know how we all weren't consumed by the flames.It took another half hour to reach Clark Rd., where we finally emerged from the trees and the blackness of night, and Pearson widened to four lanes. By this time I had managed to get my wife (who was at the bottom of the hill in Chico at the Starbucks) on the phone. "I think I've made it," I told her, "We're out of the trees."
10:45 AM
At 10:45 I was passing a still intact Paradise Elementary School at the same moment that the Landsat 8 satellite snapped a photo of the fire. I had no idea that our house was already in flames or that I literally wasn't out of the woods. It had taken me an hour and 45 minutes to travel 2.2 miles. |
| Red dot: Me at 10:45 AM. Black house: our house. |
We made reasonably good time down Pearson to Skyway; traffic was moving and there were no signs of flames. At least, that is, until we approached Neal Rd.
As we neared the intersection, I could see that the whole left side of Skyway was on fire. Flames engulfed 60 foot tall pine trees. Too late, I realized that the uphill lanes closest to the fire were closed and they were forcing us onto Neal Rd.
I immediately knew this was a mistake. Neal is a narrow, tree choked road, a single lane each way. I didn't want to be in the trees again.
11:22 AM
At first, we moved along briskly, but within minutes several geniuses decided to go down the wrong side of the road, even though they were clearly using the uphill side for emergency vehicle access. Within seconds we came to a complete stop. And there we sat - completely unmoving - for 50 minutes.It became pitch black again. And then I could see the fire.
It came up the canyon on our right. I watched as the trees caught fire. I watched as the house next to my car started to smoke, as the eaves caught fire, and as it became totally engulfed. I listened to the popping of propane tanks and spray cans as the house burned. And I finally understood the sounds I had heard as I left our house two and a half hours before.
And still we didn't move.
 |
| The house next to my car completely engulfed in flames. |
Once again, people began to abandon their cars and run. I watched a nurse get out of her car in front of me and hug - crying - a women from the car next her.
I tried not to panic, but it was getting grim. There were cars to the left of me, cars in front of me, cars behind me, and flames to the right of me. The popping got louder and closer. I sat there, trapped, just waiting to be burned alive.
Reception was very poor, but on and off I was able to get through to my wife. I told her that I loved her and that I might not make it. We cried. She said that as long as we kept talking, I would make it. I wasn't so sure. I felt that I was saying goodbye. If we didn't move, I knew I was going to die.
12:13 PM
After almost an hour watching everything on my right be consumed, and contemplating a horrifying trapped death as the flames approached, a couple of teenagers came running up the road. "Everybody get on the right side of the road!" they yelled, signaling everyone on the wrong side of the road to move over. Miraculously, as people merged, we started moving.Within 10 minutes we were out of the trees, and I could see that the entire canyon between Neal and Skyway was a sea of fire. It was an unbelievable scene, but we were moving and we were out of the fire.
1:00 PM
I finally got to Highway 99 at about 1:00 PM - four hours after leaving my home for the last time.But I was alive, and so was the cat.
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| Kitty |
I finally met up with my wife at the Casa Ramos in Willows around 2:00. We were lucky. We were all alive.
*Times provided by Google Maps Timeline and timestamps on individual photographs.
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