Northern California Wildfire Leaves Town in Ruins, Thousands Flee

Reuters
11/9/2018
Updated:
11/9/2018

PARADISE, California—A fast-moving wildfire advanced to the outskirts of the Northern California city of Chico early on Nov. 9, forcing thousands to flee after it left the nearby town of Paradise in ruins.

Fire officials issued a mandatory evacuation notice for homes east of Chico, a city of about 93,000 people situated about 90 miles north of Sacramento.

Flames from the unchecked, 20,000-acre Camp Fire were being driven westward by 35-mile-per hour winds, fire officials said.

The fire earlier ripped through Paradise, about 20 miles east of Chico. “The town is devastated, everything is destroyed. There’s nothing much left standing,” said California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokesman Scott Maclean.

“This fire moved so fast and grew so fast a lot of people got caught by it.”

Maclean said an as yet unspecified number of civilians and firefighters had been injured, and that it could be days before authorities would know whether anyone had died.

An inmate firefighter crew work to create a defensible space while battling the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, on Nov. 8, 2018. (Stephen Lam/Reuters)
An inmate firefighter crew work to create a defensible space while battling the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, on Nov. 8, 2018. (Stephen Lam/Reuters)

Paradise is located on a ridge and had limited escape routes. Traffic accidents turned roads into gridlock and residents abandoned vehicles and ran from the flames carrying children and pets, officials said. One woman stuck in traffic went into labor, the Enterprise-Record newspaper reported.

“It’s very chaotic,” Officer Ryan Lambert of the California Highway Patrol.

Rescuers used a bulldozer to push abandoned cars out the way to reach Feather River Hospital and evacuate patients as flames engulfed the building, Butte County Supervisor Doug Teeter told reporters.

The hospital was totally destroyed, Mike Mangas, a spokesman for operator Dignity Health, told Action News Now.

The fire, which began early on Thursday, was the fiercest of several wind-driven blazes across California, during what has been one of the worst years for wildfires in the state.

By Stephen Lam