August 1 9 9 3
INFERNO IN PARAD
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Editor’s note: This eerily prophetic story appeared in this newspaper on Aug. 12, 1993, a few months after a fire drill on the Ridge. The article begins with a fictional narrative that predicts a wind-driven firestorm capable of killing thousands of Ridge residents— a warning sounded 25 years before the Camp Fire took the lives of at least 86 people and destroyed nearly 19,000 structures. It is accompanied by photos CN&R staffers and contributors took of the Ridge and surrounding areas that were charred during the Nov. 8 blaze.
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mall clusters of evacuees stand be side their overlo Meyer parking lo aded vehicles in t, gazing up at th the Fred e horrible orange about why they w sky to the east an ere able to get ou d talking t when so many bors were not. of their friends an d neighThe down-canyon winds are still bl owing hard—gust says. The tempe s of up to 50 mph rature is well ov , one man er 90 degrees. “God, when thos e houses along th e rim went up it says a white-hai was like they wer red man standing e exploding!” beside an expens got all the patient iv e-looking motorcy s out of that nurs cl e. “Hope they ing home across me and Sandy w from us. If I didn ould still be up th ’t own this bike, ere stuck in traffic “We were lucky, !” too,” replies a yo ung woman with arms. “We got ou a tiny, fur-singed t the back way th puppy in her rough Butte Mea up near Lovelock dows before Skyw .” ay got jammed They fall silent. Ev erybody seems to be thinking the sa “How many, you me thing. figure?” the whi te -h aired man finally Nobody answers. asks. It’s a question th ey don’t want to “I hear it could be contemplate. as many as 9,00 0,” somebody of fers at last. Really? Nine thousand people burned to death by a fire on the Paradise Ridge? “That’s right, 9,000,” says Butte County Supervisor Gordon Thomas, whose Fifth District jurisdiction includes Paradise and the Upper Ridge. “A CDF [California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention] study says 50 percent of the population in an area like the [Paradise]
Pines could die if fire conditions were bad enough,” he continues. “Well, if you take the Pines/Magalia population of about 18,000 and divide it by two, that’s what you’ll come up with.” There weren’t even 9,000 casualties in the Battle of Gettysburg, Thomas is fond of pointing out. Not only that, 9,000 casualties would
As the Camp Fire ravaged the Ridge communities on Nov. 8, 2018, the view from Chico was of a “horrible orange” eastern sky. PHOTO BY CHARLES FINLAY
make the Great Ridge Fire the worst natural disaster in American history. Sure, the image of all those body bags lined up along the smoking, wreckage-choked streets of Paradise is a real shocker. But shock value is exactly what Thomas is after. “People accuse me of creating a panic, but I’d rather have a panic now than during an actual fire,” says the feisty politico, who made fire preparedness one of his chief campaign issues in the last election. Local firefighting officials are more cautious with their warnings. Neither Battalion Chief John Hawkins of the Butte-CDF Fire Center in Magalia nor his boss, Butte-CDF Unit Chief and Fire Warden Steve Brown, would endorse Thomas’ body count figures.