Dunster resident recalls her experience with the deadly California Camp Fire
By Kerry Hall
It is not easy to describe to people what it is like to have lost everything in Camp Fire on November 8th, 2018. What immediately strikes most people is the loss of property, pictures, family heirlooms, vehicles, art. Yet what we experienced was so much more than the loss of things. We lost our lifestyle and all that fostered it: habits and routine, pets and hobbies, community, neighborhood, and friends.
By the fall of 2018, we had lived in our home on the mountain ridge for 17 years. We moved from Vacaville, CA when our youngest of four children was just 2 months old. We immediately began to make the house our home, redoing floors, removing wallpaper, replastering walls, and ceilings, painting, and repairing. Outside we tore out overgrown jungles and replaced them with flowering shrubs and groundcover. I collected almost a dozen different varieties of hydrangeas, locally propagated Iris, and heirloom lilacs my mom gave us or that we reclaimed from old area homesteads. Our yard was prime for wildlife viewing and bird watching. We constructed pathways, pergolas, and archways, and planted vegetable, cactus, flower, and herb gardens. A dry rock bed that simulated a creek ran under a footbridge to a small pond. During the unprecedented drought, the fresh water attracted racoons, skunks, deer, and foxes. There were feeders for wild birds, the Steller’s Jays I fed by hand. We raised chickens and built them a gorgeous coop and fenced yard.
The morning of the Camp Fire began as most mornings for us. Our daughter Emily was headed to Chico State for class. Dan, my husband, was getting ready for work. I was ready to drive our youngest son, Christopher to his recital in downtown Paradise. Chris had been playing guitar with a community musical group and this performance would be evaluated as a graduation requirement. I commented on the steady sound of sirens we could hear going down Pentz, the main road. My husband said he would drive to work that way and see what was going on. I turned on the local Chico radio station to see if anything was being reported and learning there was a fire 20 miles away in an area called Pulga. The morning was bright and cloudless, but windy.
We had evacuated with much of the town before, when fire ravaged the neighboring ridge. That time our 90-year-old neighbor, a Macaw parrot, our Springer Spaniel and 4 kids were in tow. We also stayed on the ridge through evacuation warnings when fire jumped the diminishing creek and raced up the ridge a block from our house. Warnings, fires, smoke plumes and water planes were becoming more commonplace every year but especially in a year where we had seen little to no rain for 5 months. Still, 20 miles seemed like a safe distance away.
Dan left for work, and we promised to call each other if we heard of any updates. Less than 10 minutes passed when we received a reverse 911 call with an evacuation warning. I immediately called him to come home, the fire was serious, and the wind was blowing our way. He was home within minutes, remarking that he could see flames across the canyon. He decided to take a moment to document the house inside and out on his iPhone, a task that proved invaluable to our insurance claim. He then left to question the neighbor who taught at a Ponderosa elementary school just a mile and a half north on Pentz Road. She said the flames were already at the school and structures were burning. We all stepped outside at this point as if to validate her claim. An enormous black cloud was coming up from the canyon, the threat was real. We wasted no time in gathering ourselves and the dog while hurriedly texting family with updates.
By this time the sky had grown dark and the sound of exploding propane tanks was growing louder, the smell of smoke stronger.
Emily immediately went to the basement and retrieved a large suitcase. She would fill it with her diabetes supplies. In the urgency of the moment, her passport, $1,000 cash, and plane tickets for her trip to Los Angeles the next day would be an expendable afterthought. She loaded her medical supplies in her car and set about to secure our 10-year-old dog Indy, who would ride with her. Chris grabbed one of his guitars and loaded it and his computer into Dan’s truck. Dan finished documenting the house and began to gather some tools and guitars. He quickly made sure the chickens had water and food.
I carried my computer to my car and searched for a tote to fill with pictures. As I loaded the albums from the closet, the lights went out. The house was as black as night, and I could no longer see what to grab. At that point the phone rang again with an immediate evacuation notification. There was no more time to retrieve belongings and we would depart with nearly empty vehicles.
Dan and Chris led the way out, Emily and Indy next, I brought up the rear. As we pulled out of the driveway, I looked back at the house framed in the darkening sky. Ashes and embers were falling heavily now, trees and fuel tanks exploding and there was a growing roar of the wind driven fire. We pulled out slowly into the cul-de-sac, visually checking other houses. Our closest neighbor across the street was still hosing down his house, everyone else was gone or going. As we approached the intersection at Pentz, we could see the steady line of cars headed down the hill. It seemed to take forever for a break big enough for us to enter the roadway together. Instinctually I looked north toward Paradise to check for traffic. That’s when I saw the wall of black smoke and fire barreling towards us. I absolutely panicked and started to cry and pray out loud that we wouldn’t be overtaken and that we would all make it out together.
We moved slowly and steadily with traffic for 12 miles, to a four-way stop near Butte college and then continued stop and go until we were over the freeway. Together we pulled off the road to collect our thoughts and look back at the huge black veil that covered the sky. I began to make calls to local hotels and secured a room in Redding for the next two nights (still hoping we would be able to go home within the next day or two). Dan wanted to check in at work and so we drove into Chico. I called friends of ours in north Chico to see if they knew what was going on. Immediately they told us to come and stay with them until the danger passed. Little did we know we would be spending the next 3 weeks with them as we awaited re-entry.
Once we were allowed back to our property, we were able to begin the process of recovery. In short, there was nothing to recover. The fire burned so hot and fast there was nothing left. We had some hope after finding our three safes, but looters had beat us to the discovery. The gun safe had been raided of the barrels and remnants, our large personal safe had been pried open and left facing upward so that whatever had survived the heat was ruined by the rain and the small safe was likewise pried open and gutted. We spent a couple days with shovels and sifters looking for anything that survived but soon realized our attempts were futile.
As we picked through the piles of broken dishware, my mother-in-law’s collection of State-plates, the Mikasa dinner set that my father-in-law sent back to his wife while serving as a Marine in Japan, mom’s depression glass and Royal Copenhagen cups, I had an idea to collect some and make a mosaic. Somewhere during the treasuring, I picked up my melted Stealthcam trail camera that had been aimed at our side yard and I tossed it in the bucket.
I had discovered bear scat on our sidewalk and had hopes of capturing the animal rummaging through the compost bin or visiting the small pond. I dragged a wooden sawhorse down to the pond to mount it on, but the camera hung too low and at an awkward angle, so I opted to secure it to a coastal sequoia near the road. It faced our neighbor’s fence, their roofline just visible through the trees, the black compost bin front and center, the bedraggled sawhorse, and another house to the right. The sidewalk and rock creek ran left to right in the frame.
The buckets of dish shards would be shuttled to our new residence in Red Bluff CA, then shuffled from the garage to the house while my husband made room there for a new motorcycle and tools. From the house they would move to the patio while we put in new flooring. They moved back inside last week so we could paint the house. We were making our new house a home; the buckets were in the way, and it was time to start the mosaic project that I had thought about 2 1/2 years ago. I came across the camera and asked Dan if he could get it open and see if the SD card was functioning. I had tried to bang it open once before, but at that point we didn’t even own a hammer. It took some force, but he opened it and inserted the card into the laptop.
What we saw was both amazing and unsettling.
Real time 9:36 am. Burning houses in the neighboring cul-de-sac trip the camera. At this moment we have already passed the 4-way stop and joined the steady stream of evacuating cars.
Real time 9:37 am. The glow of the fire gets brighter as traffic doubles and moves steadily towards the 99 freeway.
Real time 9:38. The gridlocked freeway appears from the dimming light. We decide to take the back way into Chico. The sky turns black as embers float among the treetops. The flames hit the pavement blockade of the street and seem to die. The camera snaps a burst of five pictures during a minute of uncertainty.
Real time 9:39 am. We cross the overpass. All Hell breaks loose in the yard. Fire has likely reached the chicken coop and the back deck. Two of my four chickens survived the fire, one mercifully euthanized shortly after, the other, badly burned and missing her toes, did not survive much longer.
Real time 9:40 am. The compost bin is fully engulfed. A weeping blue atlas cedar tree and an ornamental pine ignite to the right of the screen. Dan calls me and asks if we should take our chances on finding a hotel in Chico. We agree to pull over and start calling about vacancies.
Real time 9:41 am. We pull over. The large Ponderosa pines burn like matchsticks. A wave of fire rolls over the fence. The neighbor’s roof is on fire.
Real time 9:42 am. Most certainly our house is on fire. We gather outside our vehicles; the wind whipping embers and ash around us and look back at the monstrous black cloud over Paradise.
Real time 9:44 am. The camera drops to the ground and captures the thick black smoke and embers in the treetops.
The camera valiantly snaps one last shot despite the lens and cover having melted inward.
It took 6 minutes for the fire to come over the fence and reach the camera, decimating our neighborhood. While it was sobering to discover these pictures, it was also fascinating and quite eye-opening to finally know what happened in those last moments. The day before the fire I wrote a quote on the blackboard at school, “Failure isn’t fatal but hesitation can be.” Little did I know how prophetic those words would be.
The Camp Fire remains one of the costliest, deadliest, and most destructive fires in California history. 85 people died that day, 2 people are still listed as missing, and there were dozens of injuries. Nearly 19,000 structures and over 150,000 acres (about 240 sq. miles) were burned. The fire moved so swift and hot that most of the damage occurred within the first 4 hours
