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This is an important safety alert
from Pacific Gas and Electric Company.
Extreme weather conditions and high fire danger
are forecasted in...
Butte County.
Starting this Thursday, November 8,
-2018.
To protect public safety,
PG&E may also temporarily turn off power in your neighborhood or community.
Please have your emergency plan ready.
Well, the night before...
I heard a... a news flick.
It said, um, it's gonna be...
It's gonna be a really windy day.
Skies are clear over Northern California today,
but it is gonna be a very dangerous day for fire danger
and due to the stronger winds.
So I told my wife Jennifer, I says, "I'm gonna staff the water tender.
So I'm gonna go up to station 33.
I'm gonna staff the water tender."
So, I...
I spent the night...
that night, at 33,
and, um, just, in my mind...
it just...
it just didn't feel right.
Normal night shift is 7:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m.
And it was quiet. I just remember that night being really quiet.
I was a half an hour away from going home.
Then my supervisor came over about 5:30.
He took the 911 call.
Fire rescue.
The caller was a PG&E employee from the Poe Powerhouse.
They were very matter-of-fact
about what they were seeing, what they were reporting, and it's a Pulga fire.
It's a really remote area.
They're common, and we had the winds.
I remember saying, "Oh, okay, might have to hold over for an hour or two,
'cause we've got a little fire, no big deal.
Just right before I go off shift, and okay, no big deal."
The red flag warning in place through tomorrow morning,
wind advisory in place through late tonight,
and then we do see some pleasant changes on the way for your weekend.
I was laying in bed with my oldest son,
who had a fever.
My mom had come up to pick up my youngest to take him down to school,
and on their drive said, "Hey,
we see a plume of smoke, and it doesn't look good."
Fire rescue. What is the address of the emergency?
I'm headed up to Paradise. Should I turn around?
We do have a large fire down in the Pulga and Concow area.
It is not, at this moment, threatening Paradise.
At about seven, I called our duty chief, uh, Chief Messina,
and said, "You know, hey, I'm hearing this thing's, like, 200 acres,"
and he said, "Yeah, I'm heading out there.
Just hang on. I'll give you a call, maybe in an hour, if I need you."
Five minutes later, my phone rang, and he said, "Get on the road."
He said he could see flames from the valley.
We dispatched a response. I dispatched it.
I actually named it,
which has been a nightmare to deal with
because everybody's like, "Why is it the Camp Fire?"
And it's like, okay, there are reasons it's named why it's named.
Like there's specific criteria we have to follow.
And...
It just seemed like a normal...
It just seemed like a normal fire at first.
And, uh...
It got bad real quick.
I got to school,
and I didn't notice anything when I pulled in,
but then, immediately after I got to my classroom,
-I noticed kind of a frenzy.
In just a matter of 20 minutes,
what looked like a calm sky was...
it was orange.
I go to the police department.
I meet up with my partner, who is in training.
Um...
And we're in a two-man car,
and we're literally in the back lot, and all this ash is just raining down.
And it... it gave you the feeling of, like, being under a volcano.
Hear that? That's... That's ash coming down.
It's not rain.
It's ash.
Goddammit.
Hello, fire rescue. What is the address of the emergency?
All I can see is the whole area here is covered in black-- In smoke.
We started getting calls,
that we're reporting to the incident commander,
of houses on fire.
Fire rescue. What is the address of the emergency?
Okay. Are you in the Concow area?
- Yes, ma'am, I am. -Go ahead and evacuate, please.
It's... It's in my yard.
It was in the Concow area, and I'm like, "Okay, that seems...
reasonable for where this fire started, I guess."
Hello. I'm calling about fire and smoke and orange glow in the sky.
If you're threatened by the fire,
then you should evacuate, even if you haven't been notified.
Fire rescue. What is the address of the emergency?
Ma'am, go ahead and evacuate. We have the fire department en route.
What's your address?
I'm trying, but it's blocking the road.
- Ma'am, get out as fast as you can. - Okay.
We just had so much we had to do on our side. So many notifications,
911 calls that we're taking, resources that we're trying to order,
radio traffic we're trying to answer...
Engine 941.
At one point, someone in the background said,
"I just took a call for a house on fire on Sawmill Road."
And I'm like, "In Paradise?"
Fire rescue. What is the address of the emergency?
A fire just started, just kind of...
that's where Sawmill Peak comes down on Concow.
I can see the flames. It's getting started.
Ma'am, it's... We have a large fire in that area.
-We're already in the area. - No, this is new flames, lady.
I mean, that's not far from my house, and I said, "No."
And they said, "Yes, Paradise," and I said, "No."
And they're like, "Yes, Sawmill Road in Paradise.
There's a house on fire, structures on fire."
I said, "From this?"
Uh, spot fires in Paradise.
And we have spot fire ash going everywhere.
Spotting on the Paradise side.
You have multiple spots on the Paradise side of the ridge now.
It's in my yard.
There's a big-ass fire on Hog Ranch Road.
Sir, we have a major fire in Concow.
That's all I can tell you, okay?
Do you know where in Concow? My father-in-law lives up there.
It's everywhere.
- It's everywhere? - Everywhere. A major fire.
It's already crossed into Paradise. Sir, I've gotta go.
I'm immediately dispatched to a spot fire,
and that spot fire's in the middle of town.
It's just getting big by the second.
It's like my whole backyard's smoking. It's coming up to my house.
Could anyone come on Pentz Road right now and come to my house and stop it?
At the intersection of Pentz and Skyway,
we got stuck in traffic.
And I thought, "Well, this is really weird because we're leaving so early."
So, we're waiting.
Five minutes, ten minutes,
20 minutes, 40 minutes.
I kill the engine. We're still waiting.
I'm thinking...
Something's not right. Like, we...
This is not a normal evacuation.
This is not what I expected.
Now, suddenly, this is a huge, huge threat
to me, and my kid, and my puppy.
This is fucking wild.
You all right, Wilbur?
It's just you and me, buddy.
Look at you. You good boy.
We'll be all right.
I'm pretty sure we'll be all right.
I could see the plume of smoke coming...
from where I was.
It was just... It was eerie.
It was just like a big monster.
I called my wife. Says, "Hey, this is it. This is what we talked about, okay?
You need to get out with the kids."
And I says, "If my phone dies,
I love you."
in the cars around me,
people that I know and I've gone to school with,
and, you know, everyone's just packed up
and just trying to get out for their lives,
and it just felt unreal that...
this is actually happening, that our town is on fire,
and just so fast.
They're evacuating the entire town of Paradise.
It's about 40,000 people.
I knew it was bad. I knew it was really, really dangerous.
We had children running in off the playground
saying that branches were landing on fire.
The wind was so strong.
And one parent looked at me, with the children on the floor,
and said, "Get out. Get out now. Get these kids out of here."
I led the kids out towards the bus,
and, um, we started loading.
- Are they evacuating the kids? - We are evacuating the kids, yes.
Okay, yeah. Just do the best you can, okay?
- Okay, thank you. - Bye bye.
My boss had walked up to me and asked
if I would get on the bus, um,
and then Mary, the other teacher who'd been on the bus at the time
was also asking, and to be honest with you,
I kind of was in shock and froze up a little bit.
I was terrified, but I looked onto that bus
and I could see my students' faces,
and you can hear kids crying, and it just...
I knew I had to be on the bus.
I just felt like I needed to get on there with them.
I was scared. I didn't want... I didn't want to, but I did.
I felt like...
That I needed to stay with the kids.
And then, we... we started,
and immediately, the first corner we hit, there was fire,
and we were stuck in traffic.
It was hot, very, very hot inside the bus.
Very smoky.
We were stopped by the McDonald's,
and McDonald's caught on fire,
and then, you see another fire directly across the street.
And then, it went completely black.
The kids were asking us, "Teacher, what time is it?"
And we're like, "It's, you know, ten o'clock."
"At night?" they asked. "Is it ten o'clock at night?"
Okay, keep your windows rolled up.
Holy cow, that's hot.
My wife...
She did everything she...
She was crying, and screaming, and...
It's okay, you guys. It's okay.
Keep going.
She was stuck in traffic, and I told her,
"Jennifer, you've gotta do everything you can."
- Come on!
My phone, it just, like, cut out.
And I thought, "This might be the last time I see her, my kids."
Oh, fuck.
We were just... just sitting ducks for a long time,
and my daughter was panicking,
and, you know, I just had to reassure her we were fine.
Come on!
"Mom, we have to stay calm.
No matter what, I'm gonna try my hardest
for me not to die."
I said, "I'm not dying today."
I said, "Today is not my day."
I just prayed, and I said, "We're gonna be okay."
Heavenly Father, please help us.
Please help us to be safe.
Fire rescue. What's the address for the emergency?
There was just call, after call, after call, after call.
Please leave the area, okay?
- Fire has jumped the road. - Fire rescue.
We have a guy calling, his wife's in surgery and the hospital's on fire.
For the people who say their house isn't yet on fire,
or their neighborhood isn't yet on fire, or they have a car, it was,
"You have to get out.
We... No one can come to help you.
We don't have anybody to come and help you."
I ran out in my Skechers and my pajamas.
My son was behind me,
and we got out of St. Peters Court onto Sawmill,
and, um, at that point, I was running out of breath.
And I'm standing there breathing, and my son's watching me,
and he says...
He put his hand in my back, and he says, "You've gotta run now, Mama.
Run now!"
And pushed me.
And, you know, when I turned around and looked,
this big tree fell right where I had been standing.
My son saved my life.
I just felt like you could just hear the fear in these people's voices,
and just the desperation,
and you just want to be there with them, and you can't, and...
Then you have to tell them, "I have to go because I have to take another call."
We took a left, and then made our way down to Roe Road.
Roe is a very narrow road,
very thick with... with trees on both sides.
Lots of fuel for the fire.
When we got stuck on that road,
and you could see that the exit was on fire,
that's when the first moment of deep hopelessness came.
We're trying to keep them from looking out the window.
The bus really started to fill up with smoke in that area.
It was very black, thick smoke.
And the kids were really getting lethargic,
and some of the littler kids were falling asleep and getting sleepy.
So I ran up to the front of the bus, and I told Kevin, the bus driver,
that there were a lot of kids telling me that they were starting to get tired.
He didn't even think about it. He took his shirt off,
and he tore it into a bunch of little pieces,
and he said, "We're going to turn these into filters for the kids
so that they could breathe."
We had one water bottle on the bus, and it was in my purse,
so we really rationed that water...
um, to create wet little filters
so every kid and adult on the bus could breathe.
At that point, I was dealing with the children,
and Abbie sat next to me,
and she said,
"Mary, I don't... I don't think we're gonna get out."
Take little breaths. Little breaths.
We were trying to hide emotion from the children,
and we kind of held each other, and, um...
we held hands.
And... so, I was trying to be strong for her,
but I wasn't feeling strong on the inside.
And, um...
And that's when we prayed.
It's hard to say this out loud,
but we... we prayed that we...
we would die of smoke inhalation.
And that's a hard prayer to make, you know, to do,
as we held each other and held hands.
And then we took...
a...
a deep breath to refocus ourselves, and...
we got back to work.
We really got back to work.
- Thirty, 29.
Go ahead, 30.
We actually went up Pentz Road, and it's two lanes.
So, we literally kind of weaved our way through traffic, splitting the lanes,
with the purpose of getting to Skyway and Clark Road.
Having worked that town a long time, I knew that intersection was a mess.
We get where Clark intersects with Skyway,
and then, we stop again,
and it's another five minutes, ten minutes.
Ma'am, we're not going anywhere.
And I'm thinking, "This isn't right. Why aren't we moving?"
There was about 150 people in the middle of the street.
Complete gridlock,
and the fire front was coming.
If you look down Skyway, which is the escape route,
it's already on fire.
We're blocked both directions.
We are stuck here right now, all of us, okay?
-Are we gonna be okay?
Sir, just pull up behind that red car.
We hear a sheriff's car come through over the loudspeaker.
He says,
"Prepare to abandon your vehicles and proceed on foot."
I was in utter disbelief.
Out of your cars!
Evacuate on foot! Evacuate on foot!
Get out of your cars!
Optimo parking lot. Optimo parking lot. Stop.
Get out of your car.
I thought, "This can't be right. We can't be safer...
on foot."
On foot. Optimo parking lot.
The fire was coming pretty... pretty hard.
Probably 80, 100-foot flames coming down the Skyway,
and it was just crushing all those buildings as it was coming.
We're all standing out in the street,
right next to a gas station...
What is that?
...and a wall of fire is coming at us.
I hear my kids' teeth chatter.
Fuck me, Kyle.
There were balls of fire that big like you hear about in the Bible.
You hear that, you know... fire from heaven and all that stuff.
And I...
never thought I'd see embers and fireballs coming out of the sky.
We came up with a plan to put people in the parking lot.
Right across the intersection, there is a great big cement pad
that had just been poured.
We gathered on that little lot. There was nowhere else to go.
I tried to get a couple of helicopters to come in and drop on us,
and, uh, they had two drops that were really high.
Didn't really have any effect.
I had to kind of change that gear...
and understand that I wasn't going to put this fire out.
One of our, uh, firefighters was up there by himself.
I said, "Hey, start breaking into these buildings over here,
and we're gonna start putting them in there."
The field right behind that slab, we found out,
was a propane tank storage field,
so those started to explode.
Every ten seconds, it was boom, boom.
I've never been in a war, but...
I don't... You can't... You don't...
That sound, when something is that loud...
it shakes you inside.
Uh, you feel it more than you hear it,
and it was constant.
Firefighters told us, "There literally is nowhere else to go.
We are surrounded, we are going to be surrounded,
and our hope for survival
is going to be laying down,
taking cover on this cement slab."
People were screaming, and someone was singing.
The propane tanks are blowing up, and there's no way out.
People don't typically survive in a situation like this, right?
You kind of go through that process of thinking like, "Wow, like...
I...
I wasn't able to save my kid."
And then, of course, you think,
"And then how's the rest of this gonna play out?"
At that point, what do you do, right? We're under this blanket.
He grabs my hand, and we just start to pray.
There's really nothing left to say.
I don't wanna die!
I don't wanna die here!
Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
And that was our reality for hours.
It just blew...
all around us...
and kept moving,
and eventually, we were allowed to get up.
The fire front, you know, passed through, and they got buses up,
and they caravaned all these people down...
and got 'em... uh, got 'em out of there.
There's room in the van. Is there anybody else?
All right.
You know, it... it was overwhelming,
but at the same time...
it was just like, "Okay, what's next?" you know?
You clear that, you made it through it,
and then, it's like, "Okay, what's our next move?"
Oh, fuck this. I can't even see.
I went back down, and I saw some people in a house.
I believe there is one more person with two dogs,
or two people with one dog, something like that.
They're being kind of hesitant to go with us, so we--
-Man!
I'd hit my siren and no one came out.
I was hitting the siren. They'd look out the window, and I'd get them to come out.
The fire was coming down the road.
There were embers lighting stuff on fire around their house,
and we were trying to get them out, and, um... and they were refusing.
We got them, we shoved them in the vehicle,
and, uh, one of their dogs jumped out and ran back to the house,
and they wanted to go back.
And I told them, "If you leave, you're gonna die here.
That fire that's coming is going to... It will kill you."
Get my phone!
So they were screaming at me, and we're in... we're in a bad situation.
- Where are we going? - Just stop.
Please let me do this.
I knew I wasn't gonna make it through the fire front,
so I picked out a house that I thought I could survive in,
and then that house caught on fire,
and it went quick.
Hey, I've got him!
Track your fire.
He was on this side of the road. We're getting the fuck out of here.
I just said, "I'm gonna do it."
I almost threw up. I mean, I was nauseous from it.
Sit tight, bro. Oh, shit. Hold on.
Hold on, brother. We're gonna get you out of here.
I had three close calls in that 24-hour period,
and I think I just kind of reached a breaking point.
I was like, "There's no way I'm gonna get away with this."
I couldn't do it anymore.
I didn't want to quit, uh, but...
You know, there's just... I've got... I've got a wife and two kids and...
um...
I... I needed to make it home, so...
I turned around and went back up, and, uh...
I'll always remember that, but, um, I made it, so...
So, anyway...
Shitty.
It was just a shitty day.
But those people are alive.
They probably don't like me very much, but they're alive,
so at least they're alive to not like me, right?
Um... so...
California's deadliest wildfire is now completely contained.
The so-called Camp Fire has burned 240 square miles of Northern California
since it broke out nearly three weeks ago.
Authorities releasing a staggering and sobering number last night.
The death toll from Northern California's Camp Fire
has climbed to 77 people.
Over a thousand people are unaccounted for. Think about that.
Over a thousand people unaccounted for in Northern California,
after a fast-moving wildfire demolished the small town of Paradise.
Now...
this is the poor guy, came down to...
to get my crippled friend out,
and he didn't make it.
Nobody made it down here. These people all got burned down.
I... I was right down below them here,
and my friend, you can see he's dead,
and his mother.
I'm sorry, buddy.
- Good morning. - Good morning.
Um, many of you spent your Thanksgiving here yesterday,
up on a hill in the rain and the snow,
and you may be asking yourself, "What is my mission?"
Your task today
is to help bring closure to a family
um, and get this community on the road back,
and that... that's kind of... moves into your purpose.
Your end state is to help a family move on
and hopefully answer that question
of where, uh, their family members who are missing are.
So, today, you're gonna be somebody's hero.
You may never see them. You may never meet them.
They may not know who you are, but you'll be someone's hero today.
This was the largest search-and-rescue operation
ever conducted in California.
Ultimately, a firefighter touched
every one of those 18,000 buildings that burned down.
It was almost complete destruction of the community.
Flattened it.
9,700 homes have been destroyed.
Total number of structures wiped out, 12,263.
The death toll climbing ever higher,
the big question is, how many more victims will be found?
Now, what do you suspect those are?
Possibly bone fragments.
Let's see if we can find where they are.
I-I kept coming home, you know, after the Valley Fire in 2015, and...
my wife, I told her, this was unprecedented.
After the North Bay fires in Sonoma and Napa,
I told her this was unprecedented fire behavior.
The Thomas Fire in, uh, Ventura and Santa Barbara,
I told her, "This is unprecedented."
And finally, she told me, "I think you have to stop saying that."
And for someone who's not a firefighter, from the outside looking in, to say that,
you know, it was kind of a wake-up call for me.
It most certainly, um...
is not normal,
and... and I don't... I want it to...
I want it to stop being normal.
We have had a series of incidents in the last ten years
that have eclipsed anything that we've had
in the history of firefighting in California.
Mass destruction,
extremely rapid fire spread,
resistant to control,
none of our tools able to fight the fire,
having to move guys out,
having firefighters getting trapped and injured and killed.
This is freaking crazy.
Everyone wants to focus on the fuel portion of it.
That's just one component.
The-- The part that's affecting us the most is our weather.
And that's what's driving these fires.
We're setting records every year.
Our humidities are lower,
the fire's burning as aggressively at night as it is during the day,
and so we don't ever get that chance to get ahead of it,
and the toll on our people is extreme.
For us,
we're living it.
I mean, I... I'm living it half of the year.
Um...
Being at war.
This is it.
This is where me and my wife, we...
saved up, and we sold our house in Magalia to buy this really nice house, and...
we felt like an adult.
Walked down there, and it was just the chimney standing.
I wish I would have grabbed
my photo albums...
of my family, my grandpa.
I wish I would have grabbed my cats.
They meant a really... They meant a lot to my wife.
But you don't have time.
There's no way to prepare...
for something like this.
I mean, it was just such a...
a fast-moving disaster.
It's a grieving process.
It feels like a death...
of the life that we had.
I want to see people back in their houses again.
I want to watch the... the walls come up.
But Paradise...
it's not the same.
Some days, we feel different.
How many of you feel different on different days?
Have you woken up and just felt, like, so mad?
Raise your hand if you have just felt so mad.
Hands down.
Have you woken up and just felt super sad?
Yeah.
We never thought we would be on the bus for almost six hours.
I know. Yes.
Six hours is a long time.
And we had some, you know, some...
some animated kids, but...
they were very brave.
I'm very proud of... I'm very proud of those kids on that bus.
Today, in your journal,
we're gonna ask that you write
how your heart is feeling today.
It's really important to write that down.
I want you to write.
Get your writing done, then I'll talk to you after.
I have mixed emotions about, uh...
living up there with so few homes,
so few people around me.
I'm scared, definitely, to go back.
Oh, my gosh.
I feel like it's a dream.
Wow.
We had a great responsibility to be hopeful for those kids.
As a mother...
uh...
you know, just knowing...
I had an important role on that bus. Abbie and I had important roles.
These kids didn't have their mom and dads.
Yeah, it's a great little school.
Wow.
We got lucky.
That's the Honey Run Covered Bridge, huh?
It was such a beautiful community.
My littlest, the other day, commented,
"Mommy, I just want to go home.
I just want to go home."
And I said, "I get it, kiddo.
I'm right there with you. All these people just want to go home."
But...
I don't want to see that road that... that we drove out on.
I think just the visions of it looking like Armageddon.
Chico's now our home.
All these people are now our home.
And, um...
Yeah, we got through it.
There's Paradise residents displaced all over the county now.
You can't just take, you know, 30,000, 40,000 people,
throw them into the next city over
and expect there to be enough housing for everyone.
Some people lost their jobs and their homes,
you know, all in one fell swoop, in one day.
Gone. Everything.
You know, that's pretty hard to recover from.
Uh, that's a challenge.
So, my heart goes out to everybody.
I haven't been back up to Paradise.
I mean, 89 people...
Eighty-nine people died.
Eighty-eight?
So many people.
Everywhere you go, there's someone.
They experienced it themselves,
or they have family or friends.
And we're just kind of all in it together, but I feel we're also, like, just all...
zombies walking.
And just shuffling around, trying to figure out,
"What do we do next? What do we do next? Where do we go next?"
Because it's such a small town
in the grand scheme of the county and the state, and...
there will be more catastrophic events
and more, you know, things that are gonna come and cover over it,
and people are gonna forget,
and I don't want them to forget,
because there's so many people who still need help.
And there's so much stuff that still needs to be done,
and, um...
I just don't want people to forget about us.