The apocalypse descended on Paradise at dawn. It was 6:30 a.m., and some of the California town’s residents were just waking up, while…
The apocalypse descended on Paradise at dawn.
It was 6:30 a.m., and some of the California town’s residents were just waking up, while others had already headed to work. Bus drivers began picking up schoolkids, and seniors ate breakfast in the town’s assisted-living facilities.
Shane Bender, a local firefighter, started quickly shepherding terrified neighbors to safety. Within minutes, hundreds of people — some screaming, others crying — streamed down the main road that locals called “the Skyway to Paradise.”
“I’m having a hard time grasping what happened here,” Bender, 31, told the Los Angeles Times after the fire wiped out his entire town.
Before this week, most people hadn’t heard of Paradise, a town nestled on a ridge at the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, 90 miles from the state capital of Sacramento.
A settler named the town in 1864, declaring, “This is paradise,” according to local lore.
Paradise, with a population of about 27,000, was a place people retired to, although more young families had moved in recently because of how affordable it was.
The town’s grocery stores, gas stations, gift shops and more than 20 churches have now disappeared, razed by the Camp Fire, one of the most deadly wildfires in California history .
“Everything is gone,” resident Randy Stump told The Guardian, wiping tears from his eyes. “It’s just a nightmare.”
Councilmember Michael Zuccolillo told the San Francisco Chronicle that 95 percent of his town is gone.
“The remaining 5 percent of buildings are barely standing. I felt like I was living in a bad dream. It was unrecognizable. I had to keep asking, ‘Where are we?’ All the landmarks are gone. Block by block, nothing,” Zuccolillo said. “Anybody who had a house in Paradise probably doesn’t anymore.”
After the blaze broke out, officials quickly identified evacuation zones and put out alerts. But the Camp Fire was fast — scorching nearly an acre per second.
Residents rushed to their cars, but as they became stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic with the flames lapping at them, they started saying their goodbyes.
“I thought, this must be what hell’s going to be,” 87-year-old Beverly Fillmore, who drove out of Paradise with her 91-year-old husband, Jim, told the Chico Enterprise-Record .
“We were going to be cremated when we die, but I thought, ‘This is it, I’m going to be cremated right now. This is when I die.’ ”
Susan Miller, 59, told CNN she and her daughter Amber Toney feared their car windows would shatter and their tires would melt from the intense heat.
“I’ll have nightmares for the rest of my life,” Miller said.
Meanwhile, Bethann and Joseph Jauron frantically tried to reach their autistic 7-year-old, Liam, who’d been picked up by a school bus and taken toward Ponderosa Elementary, which was on fire.
It wasn’t until much later that day that they learned firefighters had protected the school bus, and they were reunited with Liam.
Resident Greg Woodcox, 58, witnessed the first fatalities of the blaze, he told the Chronicle .
Video he shared with the Chronicle, taken in the aftermath of the fire, shows a stark, apocalyptic scene — burned-out cars surrounded by gray smoke, shriveled trees and an eerie white sky.
“Nobody made it,” Woodcox says in the video. “These people all got burned out. I was right down below them here. My friend, you can see he’s dead, and his mother.”
He told the paper, “Those poor souls. I tried to get them out, but we were trapped like rats.”
Fillmore and her husband, who were able to make it to safety, said they saw the “Welcome to Paradise” sign in flames on their way out of town.
“I don’t ever want to see a tree again, ever,” Fillmore said. “I know it’s going to catch on fire.”
Amber Toney told CNN she was reeling from the loss.
“How can God take a town away that’s called Paradise?” she asked.
