Former San Francisco Chronicle Journalist Lizzie Johnson, now with the Washington Post, embedded with some who survived the Camp Fire to produce an account of that harrowing day in November, 2018. Johnson's story, the fruit of 500 interviews, is unrivaled in its gripping emotional intensity, taking readers deeply into the lives of mostly working-class Ridge residents that fateful Thursday.
"Paradise: One Town's Struggle To Survive An American Wildfire" ($28 in hardcover from Crown; also for Amazon Kindle and in an author-read audiobook) bears witness, Johnson writes in the acknowledgements, "to the human cost of climate change.... I have hoped that my reporting would force others to heed the wildfire crisis unfolding in California. I have hoped that it would deeply honor fire victims...."
The book is divided into five parts (Kindling, Spark, Conflagration, Containment, and Ash), with an epilogue taking into account the September 2020 North Complex fire that "killed sixteen people and leveled the hamlets of Berry Creek and Feather Falls."
Here are CalFire division chief John Messina, dispatcher Beth Bowersox, bus driver Kevin McKay, Heritage Paradise maintenance worker Jamie Mansanares and his and Erin's child Tezzrah, and Rachelle and Chris Sanders, and their newborn, Lincoln. Their stories, and others, told in astonishing detail, show courage and human frailty in the midst of a fire with a mind of its own.
PG&E admitted culpability. The line broke on Tower 27 / 222, "the snapped cable flapping in the wind" because an old hook gave way. "Wind and weather had catalyzed its slow decay. It had been bought for 22 cents in 1919; a replacement hook in 2018 would have cost $19."
Those who attended the anniversary commemoration of the Camp Fire "thought of all the things they had lost: the Gold Nugget Museum, the Elks Lodge, Mendon's Nursery. The old Paradise sign topped by the bandsaw halo." Eighty-five lives.
This is stunning reporting, a chilling reminder of the continuing peril facing our beloved Ridge.
