“Three Fire Mountains: Stories Of Wildfire And Recovery In California”

“Wildfire traumatizes a community all at once,” writes Katie Simmons, former Disaster Recovery Director for the Town of Paradise, “leaving everybody reeling with shock and dealing with one another and themselves in a heightened emotional state.”

Now Deputy Chief Administrative Officer for Butte County, Simmons was part of the first Policy Fellowship with Stanford University Impact Labs over the course of two years, beginning in late 2023. “When I started the fellowship,” she says, “I didn’t plan to talk about suicidal thoughts, or my dad’s death,” or her chronic illness. Instead, “I planned to talk about fire through the narrow lens of data…. As it turns out, reckoning with fire is indistinguishable from reckoning with life, because fire touches every part of life.”

Simmons reckons with both fire and life in her extraordinary memoir, named for a Camp Fire memory her youngest daughter had as she saw it from Chico. “Three Fire Mountains: Stories Of Wildfire And Recovery In California” ($37.99 in hardcover from Springer) is a heart-rending account of recovery’s messy reality, told through individual stories as well as from a professional vantage point that contends with agencies at odds with each other.

Simmons presents a recovery triage tool, a host of questions dealing with the aftermath of a fire both for individuals and the community. She feels rage when Federal and State agencies don’t seem to understand the vast difference between urban and rural recovery (and what does recovery even mean?) and intact and destroyed communities.

There are some victories. “For both the Camp Fire and North Complex fire,” she writes, “I worked with staff to build cases for time extensions on FEMA Individual Assistance and we were successful.”

When the fire is out, “except for the destruction it has wrought and the landscape it has altered, the sky turns blue again and life goes on.” But trauma remains. “Fire recovery is like putting together a delicate puzzle wearing a blindfold and heavy gloves.”

“As we await the start of another fire year I wonder … how do we keep going?” We keep going, she writes, because of love. “My definition of recovery is love.”

“Firescaping Your Home: A Manual For Readiness In Wildfire Country”

“Fire must be recognized as an integral part of our landscapes,” write biologists Andrienne Edwards and Rachel Schleiger in a stunningly beautiful and indispensible guide to staying safe. What that means, they write, is moving away from old fire suppression ideas and moving toward living with fire even as changing climate and more flammable invasive species (looking at you, Scotch broom!) make it trickier to live in the wildland-urban interface (WUI).

Edwards is a Chico State botanist; Schleiger, a plant ecologist whose Magalia house survived the Camp Fire, teaches at both Chico State and Butte College. Their book, “Firescaping Your Home: A Manual For Readiness In Wildfire Country” ($29.99 in paperback from Timber Press; also for Amazon Kindle) gives readers clear guidance about hardening one’s home, creating defensible space, and planting fire-safe gardens.

In full-color pages the authors offer a catalog of hundreds of native plant species that might slow a fire, in part by catching embers. They also discuss how fire behaves and how to think in terms of fire-suppression zones. 

Five feet around the house should be a “noncombustible zone” (no organic mulch or wood chips); next come the “green zone,” the “fuel reduction zone” and, finally, beyond 100 or 300 feet, the “habitat zone.” Details on how to maintain each zone guide even a WUI novice and come not only from the authors’ expertise but from lived experience (before Edwards replaced her old roof tiles a baby possum fell through a hole—an open door for embers).

“A powerful key to protecting your home in wildfire-prone areas,” the authors write, “is to learn how vegetation and structures affect wind patterns” and to consider using a “fire shelterbelt,” windbreaks of “fire-resistent (hydrated) trees and shrubs” that can “reduce wind, flying embers, and firebrands.”

Bottom line: “We must recognize that protecting homes and families is not about controlling wildfire but rather reducing the flammability of our homes, landscapes, and communities.” The use of prescribed burns, and even letting some wildfires burn where the threat is small, draw on the wisdom of Native peoples. “Fire is something we can coexist and evolve with, moving into the future.”

"Snow After Fire: A Memoir Of The Paradise Camp Fire And Its Aftermath"

"My heart drops when I take in the scenery," Kandi Maxwell writes, some four years after the Camp Fire. "Paradise is scarred. It will take years to heal the landscape, and much of the geography has been changed forever. It's soul crushing."

Though she and her husband Lloyd were cabin dwellers in the Sierra foothills, away from the fire, her two sons, "who lived on a small dead-end road off Pentz," had to evacuate on that fateful day. At the same time Kandi was dealing with chronic fatigue, Lloyd COPD.

The fire sets into motion a chain of family events recounted with skill and compassion in "Snow After Fire: A Memoir Of The Paradise Camp Fire And Its Aftermath" ($15.99 in paperback from Legacy Book Press LLC; also for Amazon Kindle). 

Maxwell will sign her book (which will be sold at a discount) at Chico's Barnes and Noble on Saturday, June 10 starting at noon.

Chapters range from Fall 2018 to Fall 2021 (and beyond, in the Epilogue). Maxwell closely observes the stresses brought on by family dislocation, her parents' failing health at the other end of the State, and tensions which threaten her marriage. "We needed our lives back. After almost a year of extending so much of ourselves to my family, we were drained. We didn't want to age this way. We wanted to live life on our own terms. … I missed the solitude of our off-grid cabin and longed for the seclusion of backcountry roads."

When Lloyd needs space and quiet, he brings a trailer to newly purchased land away from the cabin, and Kandi must ford snow and mud to visit. She's alone in the cabin, except for Poochie (renamed Little Bit). Eventually come reconciliation, a granddaughter's birthday celebration in Bille Park, and another move.

Maxwell realizes "writing was my way to find clarity in an often-confusing world. It provided structure to my messy emotions. It allowed me time to reflect and to discover something to be thankful for during the chaos. It was, and is, how I find hope."

Readers will sense that hope, and celebrate as well.

"Camp Fire: Day One – 'Rescue People And Don't Get Killed'"

In floods or fires, those charged with protection of the public are the ones moving toward the disaster, often at the risk of their own lives. William "Bill" Sager, former Butte County Fire Chief, now retired from CAL FIRE and living in Redding with his wife, Karen, a volunteer at the information call center during the Camp Fire, tells the story of the tragic fire through the eyes of those CAL FIRE personnel who were in the midst.

"Camp Fire: Day One – 'Rescue People And Don't Get Killed'" ($25 in paperback, published independently through Citygate Associates, available at Barnes & Noble) draws on more than fifty interviews.

In a letter to me, Sager notes that he wrote his book after talking with Incident Commander John Messina on the second day of the fire. Getting the interviews was an emotional process. Firefighters rescued others even as their own homes were burning. "Yet they persevered." Four years later, he says, "many are retired, some on physical disability, some on psychological disability."

Several of the fifty-plus chapters provide overviews of the fire and the Butte College staging area, but most focus on first-hand accounts beginning with Beth Bowersox, dispatcher and "call taker" at the Emergency Command Center, whose responsibility was to name the fire. 

As the severity of the fire became apparent, engines, strike teams, dozers, and air support were all activated. Battalion Chief Tony Brownell was there that first day. As Sager writes, Clark Road "was packed with people trying to escape the fire … he proceeded north to Wagstaff to check on the Kmart parking lot situation. Between two and three hundred cars were jammed in there. … It was a TRA" (temporary refuge area).

Chapters, many containing maps and photographs, detail dramatic rescues as well as tragic losses and the extraordinary interconnection of the stories. What emerges is how often those on the scene had to make split-second decisions to save lives, part of their CAL FIRE training. 

Some who evacuated that day can read, perhaps for the first time, what was going on in their own neighborhood immediately after leaving. 

Sager's work here is simply indispensable.

The Camp Fire In Books

Journalists, poets, photographers, artists and ordinary citizens have chronicled the profound and lasting impact of the Camp Fire. Here are the books we've covered in the Biblio File, with excerpts from my reviews.

THE CAMP FIRE 2018: LIVING ON THE RIDGE by Paula Link

• "Link summarizes some of the harrowing accounts of escape found on YouTube and there are dozens of full-color photographs."

PARADISE: ONE TOWN'S STRUGGLE TO SURVIVE CAN AMERICAN WILDFIRE by Lizzie Johnson

• "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."

AFTER/ASHES: A CAMP FIRE ANTHOLOGY edited by John LaPine

• "As the editors write in a new anthology of prose, poetry, and images--a creative response to the Camp Fire--it took seventeen days to completely contain it."

THE CAMP FIRE: DREAMS, NIGHTMARES, HOPES by J.R. Henson

• "His escape on the day of the fire is more harrowing because his truck is low on gas. … He traces his emotional journey through poems and essays…."

I ESCAPED THE CALIFORNIA CAMP FIRE by Scott Peters and S.D. Brown

• "The story is a fictionalized account of the fire which draws on published reports."

FIRE IN PARADISE: AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY by Alastair Gee and Dani Anguiano

• "Together, drawing on hundreds of interviews, they tell the story of the Camp Fire with skill and even-handedness."

PEOPLE, PLACES & PIECES OF PARADISE by Douglas Keister

• "Keister has created stunning images that capture the soul of Paradise…."

PARADISE ISN'T LOST: EMBRACING RESILIENCE IN THE FACE OF LOSS by Kari Carter

• "There are losses, from family members to precious possessions, even her marriage. Yet she finds resilience."

MY NAME IS HALEY AND I LIVE IN PARADISE…" written and illustrated by Steve Ferchaud

• "Paradise memories in a children's book for all ages."

THE CALIFORNIA CAMP FIRE: REFLECTIONS AND REMNANTS by photographer Ron Schwager

• "… a masterpiece that will cause readers to pause and reflect with every turn of the page."

CALIFORNIA BURNING: THE FALL OF PACIFIC GAS AND ELECTRIC—AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR AMERICAN'S POWER GRID by Katherine Blunt

• "… a measured, and yet devastating, history of PG&E."

BURNT OFFERINGS by illustrator Steve Ferchaud

• "After the fire he decided to compile all 62 sketches into a book, the proceeds of which would go to helping Camp Fire survivors."

BURN SCAR: A CONTEMPORARY DISASTER THRILLER by T.J. Tao (Michael J. Orr)

• After the surviving the fire, the author offers a fictionalized version set in Idaho.

PARADISE FOUND: A HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL TEAM'S RISE FROM THE ASHES by Bill Plaschke

• "Reporting on the Bobcats' first football season after the Camp Fire."

FIRE ON THE RIDGE: A COLLECTION OF POEMS by Bill Hartley

• The destruction of Joy Lyn's Candies, and poems to release sorrow.

OUT OF THE ASHES: ONE SURVIVOR'S STORY IN THE AFTERMATH OF TWO HISTORIC WILD FIRES by Antoinette Peppler

• The Saddle Fire in 2016, then the Camp Fire.

WHERE TO NEXT? By Joan Goodreau

• From evacuations to a pandemic, the Chico poet asks a profound question.

THE SOUND OF THE SNOW GEESE: A TRUE STORY OF SURVIVING CALIFORNIA'S DEADLIEST WILDFIRE by Dax Meredith

• "… caught in the Camp Fire as she and one of her young sons fled toward Paradise from Magalia."

"California Burning: The Fall Of Pacific Gas And Electric—And What It Means For America's Power Grid"

"The Camp Fire started just three days after I joined The Wall Street Journal," writes energy reporter Katherine Blunt. Her award-winning articles form the basis of a measured, and yet devastating, history of PG&E. 

"California Burning: The Fall Of Pacific Gas And Electric—And What It Means For America's Power Grid" ($29 in hardcover from Portfolio; also for Amazon Kindle) begins that fateful morning of November 8, 2018 and ends in Butte County Superior Court on June 16, 2020, with CEO Bill Johnson saying "Guilty, your honor" to each of 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter. (And, in an Epilogue, the Dixie Fire.)

In between, drawing on more than 200 interviews and thousands of pages of court and historical documents, Blunt pieces together not just the utility's origin story, but how its executives came to focus more on developing clean energy sources than on carefully inspecting and fixing gas pipelines and transmission towers deteriorating by the day.

The San Bruno pipeline explosion in 2010 revealed that PG&E had used the cheapest and least accurate safety testing of its gas lines. As Blunt notes, calling on the point made by San Bruno PD detective James Haggarty, "this was not a crime in which one person pulled the trigger. It was a crime committed slowly, over the course of decades, as corporate strategy shifted to prioritize shareholders, forcing middle-level employees to respond accordingly."

And so it was with the Caribou-Palermo transmission towers in the Feather River Canyon, constructed around 1907. In the investigation, Butte County DA Mike Ramsey and Deputy DA Marc Noel determined the hook that failed, leading to the spark that started the Camp Fire, "had been purchased for 56 cents in 1919."

The final part of the book details the maneuvering over the victims' compensation fund, and why so little has gone to those who were actually victims. In the midst of PG&E's second bankruptcy, the judged charged with approving the fund heard from victims. "They all agreed: $13.5 billion wasn't nearly enough if half of it depended on the company's share price."

A reporter tells the story of a "slow crime," dispassionately. And, somewhere, a reviewer weeps.

"Paradise Found: A High School Football Team's Rise From The Ashes"

Paradise High's junior safety Dylan Blood said it this way: "After all we've been through, we have each other's back in everything; we play for each other. It's win or death. If it wasn't for Paradise, none of us would be who we are. Paradise is something within each of us, and we're fighting for it together." 

It's the spirit of "CMF"--"Crazy Mountain Folk." And it's captured in a heart-rending new book by LA Times columnist Bill Plaschke. Reporting on the Bobcats' first football season after the Camp Fire, Plaschke entered the life and thoughts of Coach Rick Prinz, the coaching staff, athletic director Anne Stearns, the players, and those who cheered them on. 

"Paradise Found: A High School Football Team's Rise From The Ashes" ($28.99 in hardcover from William Morrow; also in audiobook and Amazon Kindle formats) reads like a cliff-hanging thriller--because it is.

Readers may know how the season ended, that cold (and rainy) dose of reality, but will not be prepared for the many stories of players and their coaches escaping the burning town and then living what came next: disruption, anger, questioning, and--commitment to football. It is enough to reduce a book columnist to a puddle of tears.

"'Football became the thing that bound the town together,' explained Jay Bell, athletic director at the high school from 1985 to 2004. 'Paradise is a different kind of town, and we had a different kind of football program.'"

On Thursday, November 8, 2018, coach Prinz texted team members at 8:10 a.m., confirming practice that afternoon at 3:00 p.m. unless the smoke got in their way. Little did he know.

Much later, after the season, at the banquet to honor the players, Prinz recalled that text. Then he said: "Eleven minutes later, we were running for our lives. These young men faced the reality of death. ... I could see the anguish and fear in my players' eyes. We didn't have a school, we didn't have a practice field, we didn't have cleats, we didn't even have a football!" But, of course, they had something else. 

You must read this book. Period.

Dan Barnett teaches philosophy at Butte College. Send review requests to dbarnett99@me.com. Columns archived at https://dielbee.blogspot.com

"Paradise: One Town's Struggle To Survive An American Wildfire"

The Chico Record called it "Paradise: The Town with a Future" on July 3, 1908. Now, rebuilding in the wake of devastation and contending with PTSD-inducing smoky skies, the future is decidedly mixed.

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.

"Paradise Isn't Lost: Embracing Resilience In The Face Of Loss"

The fires have come again, and so have loss and grief. A new memoir aims to show a way forward.

 

Former Paradise resident Kari Carter had moved to town three months before the Camp Fire. On that fateful day, "I got out with a leather duffle bag, my little dog Reese, my car, and with a couple of neighbors ... just minutes before roads turned to gridlock. From my cousin's living room in Chico, a handful of us watched the harrowing news footage of flames ripping through neighborhoods." Her place at Vista Village, she learned later, had turned to ash.

 

But her memoir isn't about "the horror of the event itself." It's just one of many losses she experiences ("I thought I had lost about everything a person could possibly lose in my sixty years of living") but the fire drives her to look more deeply within at her own responses and, she writes, to find the inner resources to continue on.

 

"Paradise Isn't Lost: Embracing Resilience In The Face Of Loss" ($16.50 in paperback, self-published, karicarterparadise@gmail.com; also for Amazon Kindle) is a clear-eyed chronological narrative dealing with loss before the fire, the fire itself, and, in the third part, "In Search of Meaning."

 

"I'd been a single parent and capable householder for fourteen years before meeting Randy," whom she married in 2000. Eventually they moved to Oroville to be close to his job at Feather Falls Casino, and she felt joy attending the Center for Spiritual Living. The group met monthly in Paradise and that became her introduction to the town she would later call home.

 

There are losses, from family members to precious possessions, even her marriage. Yet she finds resilience.

 

"The more I looked at resilience, the more I could see its connection to loss and grief. It doesn't matter what type of loss. Loss is anything that leaves a hole in one's heart. And loss comes with living. But the way our losses are grieved—or avoided—is another matter. The way in which grief is experienced and processed, influences whether we get stuck, or move forward."

 

In this book Carter moves forward.

 

"'My Name Is Haley And I Live In Paradise...'"

Burned out by the Camp Fire, Paradise illustrator Steve Ferchaud fills his latest creation with Paradise memories in a children's book for all ages--and for the ages.

 

The book came about when the Executive Director of Youth On The Ridge Community Foundation, Debbie LaPlant Moseley, had the idea of raising funds by auctioning off names and characters to be put into a book. The winning bid came from the Hartleys, owners of Joy Lyn's Candies, and so their granddaughter, Haley, is the one who tells the story, a kind of diary of Paradise before, during, and after the fire.

 

"'My Name Is Haley And I Live In Paradise...'" ($14.99 in paperback, published by Youth On The Ridge Community Foundation; printed by Digital Print & Design in Chico) is available at ABC Books in Chico and through the website of the Foundation's Paradise Chocolate Fest (chocolatefest.us/getting-involved/my-name-is-haley). Proceeds go to the Foundation.

 

As writer and illustrator, Ferchaud tells a hopeful story. But it's hope that knows full well what has been lost. 

 

"I have to tell you about Noble Orchards," Haley writes. "I think I have a special talent for picking apples because I have always picked the best, juiciest, sweetest apples in the whole orchard. ... I wonder what the going rate is for an apple expert?"

 

Haley and her friends Lucia Violet and Sam spend time at Joy Lyn's ("I always choose the brittle"). There's Gold Nugget Days (readers may know some of the folks in the crowd), the Chocolate Fest, Gold Nugget Museum, Darlene's Ice Cream dreams, and Johnny Appleseed Days. 

 

Then one morning the phone rings. Haley and her mom must evacuate, try to make it to Chico to meet her dad. Booming sounds are all around. For five pages Ferchaud's palette turns red. 

 

"Then suddenly, there was blue sky."

 

Days pass, and the Skyway reopens. The two-page spread of a devastated Paradise, "empty and burned away," is heart-rending.

 

Months pass, and the family rebuilds. "There is still so much I want to say ... but do you know what I love saying the most...? 'Hi! My Name is Haley, and I live in Paradise.'"

 

"Fire In Paradise: An American Tragedy"

"It was 4:00 a.m. on Friday, November 9," write Alastair Gee and Dani Anguiano of 2018, "and the destruction of the Paradise Ridge as it had been known for a century and a half was almost complete." 

Gee is an editor-reporter for the U.K.-based Guardian newspaper in its West Coast office. Anguiano, also a Guardian reporter, honed her journalistic career at the Chico State University Orion and (for three years) this newspaper. Together, drawing on hundreds of interviews, they tell the story of the Camp Fire with skill and even-handedness.

"Fire In Paradise: An American Tragedy" ($26.95 in hardcover from W. W. Norton & Company; also for Amazon Kindle) is divided into three sections: "Paradise" (which establishes the town's setting in California history and its vulnerability to conflagration); "Hell" (which includes the stories of those who had to make the agonizing decision of whether to stay or go); and "Ashes and Seeds" (which chronicles "a city dispersed").

It's an "American tragedy" because there are other communities, such as Nevada City, about which residents say "it's only a matter of time." "In the wake of the Camp Fire," the authors write in an Epilogue, "a century of certainties about the ability of humans to dominate fire were in question." 

In the wake of the Camp Fire, P.G.&E. plunged millions of Californians into darkness with power shutoffs--and yet there apparently was at least one utility-caused fire, in Sonoma County, evoking for those in and around the Ridge "a familiar sense of dread."

There are eerie resonances with the world we are living through now. In the midst of the fire, "firefighters across the Ridge adopted the makeshift tactic called 'sheltering in place' ...." 

As the fire burned, thick smoke enveloped large parts of the state. "Authorities recommended n95 respirators, so called because they claimed to filter out at least 95 percent of dust and mold in the air." 

Evacuees faced sickness: "In the coming days about 145 people in shelters caught norovirus, a highly contagious illness causing vomiting and diarrhea."

"It was incomprehensible," Gee and Anguiano write, "just how swiftly an entire world had been lost." It happened, and is happening again.

"Kill The Bucket List: Start Living Your Dreams"

Novelist T.J. Tao said it: "Only by losing everything, do I gain the Freedom to build a life of uncluttered purpose." Tao is actually the pen name of Michael J. Orr, who writes that the aphorism "was a literal statement based on circumstances I was going through at the time. You see, I wrote that quote on November 11, 2018, three days after the deadliest and more destructive wildfire in California history had destroyed my hometown of Paradise."

He continues: "Ninety-five percent of the homes in Paradise were destroyed, including my own.... My family and I had, quite literally, lost everything: our home, our community, our jobs, our pets, and our belongings. ... That is where the Freedom came from, the idea that since we had to start over from scratch, where did we want to do it and what did I want to do?"

It led Orr and his family to move to Idaho. Wanting to write, he began publishing a series of novels under the T.J. Tao name (including "Burn Scar," which imagines the Camp Fire taking place on a ridge in Idaho) and, under his own name, a motivational "kick in the pants" called "Kill The Bucket List: Start Living Your Dreams" ($7.99 in paperback from WordsmithMojo Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle).

"Far too many of us, men and women alike," Orr writes, "have become comfortable in our discomfort, instead of using our discomfort to stimulate a change. ... What if you could choose to Kill Your Bucket List and live your dreams, instead of putting them off?" His answer: "YOU CAN!"

The goal is to approach one's dreams with a dose of reality (one may not win the Nobel Prize in Literature but one can write), humility (which "will allow you to suck without throwing in the towel"), and plenty of baby steps: "Start> practice> suck> practice> suck> practice> Aha> practice> suck...less> practice> improve> practice> get better > practice> become competent...."

Too often, he says, "F.E.A.R. becomes our answer: Forget Everything And Run." We need to "re-frame our fears and self-doubt." F.E.A.R. becomes "Face Everything and Rejoice."

Readers may find that's just what they need.

"The California Camp Fire: Reflections And Remnants"

An extraordinary coffee-table book explores the emotional interior of those who survived the Camp Fire and then looks outward at the terrible beauty wrought by the flames and heat. "Monochromatic portraits" by Chico photographer Ron Schwager are paired with fourteen verbatim accounts of those who escaped. Chico screenwriter and novelist Phil Midling writes in the prologue that the images are "beautiful in their simplicity and starkness yet also convey a rich complexity. ..."

Midling, who also provides the epilogue, writes that the second half of the book features stunning full-color patterns, "many resembling paintings of abstract art. Among the piled rubble and cindered ash, Ron was able to extract the images of devastation; contorted remnants and skeletal configurations of heat-fused plastic, steel, and glass viewed through a kaleidoscope of tertiary-like colors--odd hues of oxidized orange-rust, and red-violet, and turquoise-blue embedded within the bleak and grayish landscape."

"The California Camp Fire: Reflections And Remnants" ($45 in hardcover, self-published, from thecampfirebook.com, with local pickup and mail orders available), designed by Connie Ballou, is a masterpiece that will cause readers to pause and reflect with every turn of the page. 

A few haunting words from the accounts: "And so we had no other choice but to drive directly through the flames. ..." (Paradise High School coach Seth Roberts, 60); "I texted a goodbye message to my boyfriend who had been calling me because I really didn't think we were going to make it out alive" (Feather River Hospital security employee Tameekah Abdullah, 28). "I remember receiving texts from certain retirement homes. ... We just couldn't get the engine to that location. I knew those residents were about to be burned to death at any moment and there was nothing we could do. And we knew a lot of those people personally" (Paradise fire captain Alejandro Saise, 45).

In the color photograph section, Schwager writes that as a photographer, though he is "drawn to the chaos, my presence seems to be unobjectionable. But amongst the hive of debris removal activity I feel I am treading on hallowed ground. I feel I need to record this in some meaningful way." 

He has done so.

"Burnt Offerings"

Paradise illustrator Steve Ferchaud (steveferchaud.com) lost his home, including his studio, in the Camp Fire. But thanks to many "angels" his pen is active again. 

In 2017 and 2018 he had taken up the "INKTOBER" challenge for artists to post a drawing each day in October in response to the word for that day. After the fire he decided to compile all 62 sketches into a book, the proceeds of which would go to helping Camp Fire survivors. His original drawings were destroyed, so he redrew each one and included a short commentary. 

"Burnt Offerings" ($9.95 in paperback, self-published with the help of MC2 Design Group) is available on Amazon and locally at ABC Books in Chico. It also contains a short narrative of Ferchaud's escape, and the aftermath, and nine drawings of "special Paradise landmarks," including the Gold Nugget Museum and the Honey Run Covered Bridge. Be prepared for a rush of feelings.

Though his drawings are whimsical Ferchaud focuses on adult concerns; there are a couple of raised middle fingers, a swear word, and plenty of monsters: greedy televangelists, politicians on the take, war profiteers. Wry humor abounds.

Take October 3, 2018; the word is "roasted." "Thanksgiving Day: We say our thanks, and then eat like there is no tomorrow. Maybe we should just eat, be thankful every day, because the odds are pretty good that there will be a tomorrow, even though it is always uncertain what tomorrow may bring." 

The drawing shows snarky pigs around the dinner table as they pass the serving platter with a plump little man roasted to perfection. Ferchaud adds: "My vegan and vegetarian friends loved this cartoon. Friends that lived in Vegas said it ruined buffets for them for the rest of their lives."

There are sweet moments, too, as Ferchaud responds to "precious." Yes, there's a Gollum-like creature in the drawing. "And speaking of rings, one of the things I found after the fire amongst the ashes was my Grandfather's ring. I found it after I stopped looking for it. Before the fire, I only wore it on special occasions. Now I wear it every day. A reminder that every day is a precious occasion."

"Out Of The Ashes: One Survivor's Journey In The Aftermath Of Two Historic Wild Fires"

On September 6, 2016, the Saddle Fire, six miles southeast of Paradise, burned hundreds of acres. Antoinette Peppler and her husband lost everything but decided to rebuild.

They "moved in & celebrated being home again in 2018. Then the Camp Fire hit. We struggled to leave our home once again after just moving in. We were evacuated for 2 weeks. We came home again on Thanksgiving Day." Fire had spared them this time, but "we lost our town, our community, family & friends."

Peppler, a poet and professional cake decorator, created a blog to "encourage & inspire others"; those entries, reflections on paintings and photographs by friends and family members, have become "Out Of The Ashes: One Survivor's Journey In The Aftermath Of Two Historic Wild Fires" (self-published paperback; send a money order or cashier's check for $25.00, which includes $5 shipping, to Antoinette Peppler, PO Box 1646, Paradise, CA 95967).

The paragraphs Peppler writes never minimize the hurt--she's been there. In "17 Treasures More" she writes: "A treasure box of remnants & charred burnt jewelry. ... Oh my heart... deep down, my soul just ached, as I felt the sorrow drop me to my knees." "Sometimes," she writes, "I’m just so emotionally & mentally exhausted. Like I have been physically running, almost sprinting, in a long-distance race. ..."

The cleanup overwhelms: "The multiple choices that add to our list, are too many decisions to make or to fix. Want to scream but no time, need to cry but no tears, have to work but can’t move, just don’t know what to do!" 

But her faith is strong: "Though we were protected this time from the flames, it has left a scar upon our hearts & souls. We feel it, but this we know, we are alive because God’s grace still abounds. He is our shelter & I am trusting in Him!"

"We can’t change the past, though that’s what we want most, but we can paint today with a vision of hope. A plan to set forth a new life for ourselves, begins with a start to finish the race."

"Fire On The Ridge: A Collection Of Poems"

"I am neither a writer nor a poet," Bill Hartley says. But in the wake of the Camp Fire, which destroyed Joy Lyn's Candies, the business he owned, he became both.

"Writing about the disaster is a release of the sorrow. It is also an acceptance that I am facing a new chapter of life, and it is up to me if I want to be happy or sad. I choose to move on; I choose happiness."

Hartley describes himself as "a chocolatier helping my son and daughter-in-law who now own Joy Lyn's." But he's an author now, too, with "Fire On The Ridge: A Collection Of Poems" ($18.50 in paperback from Gold Dust Press; available at the Gold Nugget/Depot Museum, 5570 Black Olive Drive, Paradise, and Treasures From Paradise, 969 Bille Road, with profits going to the museum.)

Each of the almost four dozen poems features a photograph by Doug Keister, and there are paintings by Pam Hartley (one of which graces the cover). Collected into five chapters, the first two, "The Fire" and "Grief," give way to "Acceptance," "Moving Forward," and "Resilience."

"My world was turned upside down," the poet writes early on. "All I saw was black and gray;/ My friends are scattered all around,/ I'm a lost soul in Paradise." 

In "Paradise Lost," memories are carried away: "As the trucks rumble and crumble the roads,/ They carry remembrances of young and old;/ The towering trees are scorched and the red earth torched black;/ We dream it didn't happen, we want our old life back."

But there's no going back: "The toll of his disaster weighs heavily on me,/ And insurance forms are all I see./ Now I just sit and muse--/ I'm suffering from the paperwork blues."

Yet later, in "Soul of Paradise," "You discover an inner strength you did not know,/ it came from hope that ebbs and flows,/ it's the love of our fellowman that shows." 

Bottom line? "So, believe in Paradise, you can't go wrong;/ The sense of community is vibrant and strong./ Although the road to recovery has many a twist,/ I'll be back in Paradise, the town I miss."

"The Camp Fire: Dreams, Nightmares, Hopes"

"In an instant," writes J.R. Henson, "the Camp Fire wiped out the community I lived in." He traces his emotional journey through poems and essays until "I reach a more settled location with the feeling of still being displaced from my home town."

"The Camp Fire: Dreams, Nightmares, Hopes" ($10 in paperback from Valley View Press) starts months before the fire; life is good, especially with "Gabie, the small curly-haired poodle." 

Yet during this time, Henson writes, "I kept seeing everything in my house through a cracked lens." The haunting vision subsides, not to return. 

Later, after the fire, Henson sees a picture of his house, and it's hard to believe. "I focus and enlarge the picture on the single object in the backyard. Now I can see the object to be a concrete birdbath with a concrete squirrel sitting at the top. That's when I know the burned down house is mine."

His escape on the day of the fire is more harrowing because his truck is low on gas. "I climb halfway up the last hill before reaching the main artery out of town. The feeling is like being stuck at the top of a Ferris wheel. All I want to do is get off this amusement park ride." 

He imagines Nature "intent on scorching every last home and big building.... Weeks later, Nature's rage slips away. Cleanup crews chop down healthy and unhealthy trees.... Finally, after many years, Nature wakes up just to see that nothing has changed for the better, and many of the human beings are just as inhospitable as they have been in the past." 

"God takes away the stewardship from human hands for being incompetent," the poet writes; "White hot flames cleanse the Paradise because of the promise that has been broken."

"It's hard for me to imagine hope's return," Henson writes. But it does, and with it the prospect of love. Maybe humans have been given another chance.

The author will be presenting his book at the Chico Library Meeting Room on Monday, November 11 from 7:00-8:00 p.m. and Saturday, December 7 from 4:30-6:00 p.m. Meetings are free and open to the public.

"The Camp Fire 2018: Living On The Ridge"

Paula Link writes that she was "born, raised and lived in Rio Linda, CA most of my life. Upon retiring from my job of 26 years and much thought I decided on a change of environment. With mixed emotions I pulled up my roots and moved to Magalia...."

That was in 2013. In some ways it was a difficult adjustment for Link and her husband Frank, but they soon settled into their upper Magalia home. They are surrounded by wildlife, part of the charm of the place, and also provided a home to a gaggle of animals, including big dogs Ziva and Zoe, little dog Daisy, Bella Bunny, house cat Oreo, birds, and seven feral kitties. When they had to evacuate on November 8, 2018, it proved quite a challenge. 

She writes about that experience in "The Camp Fire 2018: Living On The Ridge" ($21.95 in paperback, self-published; also for Amazon Kindle). "The smoky sky and air was threatening and to think that if we had taken the Paradise roads out we may not have survived. There were many others with the same idea, as there were a good number of vehicles ahead and behind us on that dirt logging road called Doe Mill Road but when we reached Highway 32 over an hour later the line of vehices coming from the Butte Meadows route with those who took the high road was just as packed and the line of headlights in the rearview mirror seemed endless."

But they survived, and so did their home. The book is less about a traumatizing ordeal (it was that, of course) but about the loss of a community, especially Paradise. Link summarizes some of the harrowing accounts of escape found on YouTube and there are dozens of full-color photographs by Frank and her son Justin Mohorich and daughter Alison Mohorich (Alison Ann Photography).

Link's reflections end on a mixed note. She is thankful for many friends who helped but writes that wildfire devastation "is just too much for someone to be ready for, especially when you have all the animals that we do. ... I hope and pray it never happens again."

"I Escaped The California Camp Fire"

Scott Peters designed hundreds of museum installations but in recent times has turned to writing for Middle Grade readers, teaming with S.D. Brown of Northern California to publish a gripping novel set in the midst of the Camp Fire.

"I Escaped The California Camp Fire" ($7.99 in paperback from Best Day Books For Young Readers; also for Amazon Kindle) is the second in the "I Escaped" series about "brave kids who face real world challenges and find ways to escape."

The story is a fictionalized account of the fire which draws on published reports. The hero is fourteen-year-old Troy Benson who lives with his parents and kid sister Emma in Paradise along with Rascal, their German Shepherd, and Midnight the cat. When his dad and mom leave him in charge to attend a dinner in Redding and stay overnight, Troy dreams of all the junk food he plans to eat.

Frankly, Troy is bored. Real civilization (read "San Francisco") is hours away. "Instead of people, Paradise had trees. Instead of streets, there was one road in and one road out. Instead of high-rise buildings, there were trailer courts tucked between small planned and unplanned neighborhoods."

The next morning, November 8, 2018, everything would change. When he woke at 9:15 "something was off. Suddenly he was wide-awake; his eyes darted left and right. He couldn't see anything. It was black." The power is out, but when Rascal starts barking Troy heads outside. "It was pitch black. There wasn't even starlight. The wind ripped at his clothes like it was being chased by fire-breathing dragons. And smelled that way, too--smoky and warm."

Eventually he knew they had to escape. The neighbor lady refuses to evacuate, so Troy has to drive his dad's SUV Bronco. In piles Emma and Rascal, with Midnight in her backpack. What comes next, the heart of the story, is travel down the Skyway with fire everywhere, running for their lives when the vehicle is caught in the flames, Rascal's key role in directing them to a stream over the hill, and Troy's quick thinking as they head for Chico. 

"Maybe," Troy tells Emma later, "there is a God."

"Burn Scar: A Contemporary Disaster Thriller"

T. J. Tao is the pen name of Michael J. Orr (wordsmithmojo.com). Now based in southern Idaho, he and his family survived the Camp Fire, and though he wanted to publish a factual account, "the truth was that our story had no ending, yet." Conspiracy theories hung in the air.

So he "settled on fiction, weaving the story with more than twenty very real survivor stories (including my own) and some of the conspiracy theory storylines: gold, corruption, government land grabs, etc."

Then he "found a ridge in west-central Idaho that had much the same shape and many of the same features as the ridge that Paradise sits on." The novel's focus is on the town of Genna (Maltese, he says, for "Paradise") with a fire that started in Bear County near Bonneville Road and so was dubbed the Bonn Fire."

The result is a riveting story of a corrupt town manager, a scheme to secure mineral rights along the eastern ridge by any means necessary, murderous henchmen, a dedicated sheriff, and the heroism of first responders and local citizens in the midst of the worst fire in Idaho's history. 

"Burn Scar: A Contemporary Disaster Thriller" ($16.99 in paperback from WordsmithMojo Publishing; also for Amazon Kindle), by T.J. Tao, also fictionally imports the "firenado" (from the Carr Fire) to plague Genna's Rite Aid.

Three weeks before the fire, "Mayor Joana Moody was in the midst of an unexpectedly difficult bid for re-election to the Town Council of Genna. ... In most towns and cities, the Town Manager worked for and at the pleasure of the Council. Not in Genna, here Jillian Dupree ran the show. ... She needed Mayor Moody" pretty much as a pawn as Jillian maneuvered the idea of bolting a sewer system onto the eastern cliffside into a fortune for herself.

The novelist is not pleased with Council doings or with "Idaho Electric Power." (Locations and identities of some key players are thinly veiled.) Despite some editing infelicities the story is a page turner in its own right, with a satisfying conclusion. 

There's comeuppance that lends an air of finality to something that never really will be finished.