11 | When Paradise Isn't | A Story of Surviving the Camp Fire

When I was around 12 years old,

I stepped outside my house one Sunday morning and I

looked up in the sky to see this huge black

cloud of smoke and it was billowing up from the direction of my friend's house.

So immediately, I ran toward the cloud of smoke

and I whipped around the corner and sure enough, my friend's house was in flames.

My friend and his family had already safely gotten out of the house.

Thank goodness.

And now they were just standing there on the curb out

front with nothing else to do, but watched the fire spread

across their home, overtaking all of their belongings.

The fire department arrived shortly after I did,

but there was really nothing they could do to save this large mountainside home.

I mean, it was a total loss.

to the people of my neighborhood,

the fire felt like something personal,

and it really woke us all up to the fact that, I mean,

this could have happened to any one of us. And that helped us

feel this great sense of sympathy for the family who lost their home.

And maybe that's what motivated our community to really come together

and try to help my friend and his family. In days following the fire,

members of the community took shifts, searching through the ashes of the home.

I remember actually walking through this burned down home, trying to salvage

any family photos or collectibles, anything that meant something

to someone in the family.

We tried to find it and save it.

We, as a community, provided meals.

We helped with housing.

And eventually what remained of this shell of a home was demolished

and it was replaced

with a completely new house that had a totally different floor plan.

My friend's family moved back in and life eventually continued as normal.

But I remember my friend's family constantly expressing gratitude

to this community for the support that they received during that trying time.

It made me think of how nice it was to live in such a community.

What I never really considered at the time, though, was

what would have happened if there had been no community?

Even more so,

what about those times when maybe an entire community encounters

great tribulation all at the same time?

Who is there to sift through the rubble then,

when rubble is everywhere? Under such circumstances,

does humanity even have the strength to exist?

I'm Jolie Hales and this is Podsitivity.

In a small town

along the foothills of the beautiful Sierra Nevada mountains,

residents looked forward to the holiday season every year.

Because with it came an annual tradition,

the Parrott family Christmas show.

Created especially for the local community.

- My brother plays the handbells and he's really good.

And so my dad said, okay, I'll buy you a set of handbells

if you'll come and do this Christmas program every year.

And then we just added

musical numbers and fun stuff.

- Fun stuff like adorable kids singing solos in Christmas costumes,

creative handbell numbers, comedic songs featuring

singing and dancing grandmas.

And even performances of a bunch of guys

smacking each other with musical tubes of different pitches.

And leading all these efforts for years

was the ever-creative and dedicated Brynn Chatfield.

- I did everything but produce it.

Costume, music, rehearsal, director.

- Brynn is the mom of three daughters, and those who know her would describe her

as kind, hardworking, often self-sacrificing, and funny.

Funny in a charmingly down-to-earth sort of way.

A lot of inner turmoil of trying to be

the person that I want to be through my positive thinking.

But then I don't want to be positive.

With a smile that lights up

her face, framed by short, tight, dark curls,

Brynn and her husband, Jeremy, have raised their three girls

in a home where they put faith at the center of their lives.

- We have a family saying that we say every night and it says:

Families forever, choose kindness, serve others, be peacemakers, learn patience,

give grace, hear Him.

- They are also big believers in being active in the community.

- We invite people over and get to know our neighbors and get to know people

we go to church with.

I don't know.

We just try to do good and be good and plant trees in people's

yards and go visit people in the hospital and and clean

our house.

- And it's out of that spirit of doing good

that Brynn’s family began performing at Christmas time for their community,

even before her kids came into the picture. As a talented singer

from a musical family growing up,

Brynn, her parents, her

siblings, and other family members living nearby,

put on their first community Christmas program while Brynn

was visiting home for the holidays during her undergraduate years.

What started out as a small family show in their local church building

25 years prior, soon blossomed into something bigger,

Moving from the church to the local performing arts center, where they packed

640 seats for two shows every year.

It was a lot of work, but incredibly rewarding

because Brynn was performing for the small California foothills community,

she had grown up in and adored.

Nestled high on a ridge between two river canyons, Brynn's

hometown felt more like a rustic mountain getaway than a typical American city.

- It's just a great place to raise a family.

It's a small community.

It's kind of it's like one high school, just a few elementary schools,

one junior high.

It's just a really beautiful small town.

We knew a lot of people there.

This is the road that I grew up on

right here.

Keith Powell lived here when I was growing up.

So did that sweet little old lady.

She died when she was about 101.

This is our neighbor, John.

And then up here, we’re coming up on what

we used to call the Hansel and Gretel house.

A few years ago, our friend Charlie bought this house

and fixed it up and lived there with two of his kids.

Their neighbor Dorothy lived there.

- Tall, green pine trees were a living staple of their community,

blanketing the landscapes of every property

and making some neighborhood homes feel like isolated cabins in the woods,

being separated from their neighbors by so much greenery

that many couldn’t even see their neighbor's home.

- You'd go to the lake or you’d go to the river or go to the flume, or

you always had to kind of find something to do.

And I think a lot of people didn't like it because of that.

But if you were willing to go find adventure,

there was so much adventure and so many fun things to do.

- At just over 18 square miles in size and home to less than 30,000

residents at its peak, it was a community where neighbors helped one another

and nothing was more important than family.

And for residents like Brynn, many of their neighbors

were literally just that -- family.

In fact, Brynn's childhood there was filled with such cherished memories that even

after moving away for a few years to go to college and get married,

she soon returned with her husband to live in that town once again,

where she went on to give birth to her three daughters in the same small hospital

she was born in herself.

- My parents lived five houses down.

My brother lived across the street from my parents.

My other brother at one time had lived on the same street

in my grandma's house next to my other brother's house.

And then another brother had lived up the street.

Right there is the house built by some of my cousins when I was growing up.

My great aunt and uncle Mary and LeGrand lived here, and then probably

about seven years ago, my cousin Brooke and her family moved into this house.

Here is where my grandma and granddad's house was.

- Three of Bynn's four brothers, all still lived in that same town,

along with her parents, her cousins, uncles, even her husband's

parents, who had moved there from a neighboring city in 2004.

And with it now being early November, much of her family was spending

even more time together than usual rehearsing for this annual community

Christmas program,

the program she had now been in charge of for two decades= was fun.

- It was fun.

But it was a big, big, big part of my life, which is

very different from now.

- Different, because if you haven't surmised by now,

their small California hometown was called Paradise.

- Fire & Rescue.

- What is the address of the emergency? - There’s a fire in my yard!

- My place is completely on fire.

- We have major, major flames.

- There’s fire all around us! - Go get the kids in the car, now!

- Sir, there’s fire all through Paradise.

- You need to save your own life.

- It was a Thursday in 2018.

- I got up early on November 8th.

I had a ton of stuff to get done that day and I was just trying to get

things kind of checked off my list.

- She was helping to manage a homeschool co-op for her sixth grade

daughter, McKell.

So she was working in her home office, getting ready for that, while

simultaneously getting her third grade daughter, Aylee, ready for public school,

and making sure her three-year-old daughter, Delynn, was taking care of, all

while juggling the community Christmas

program planning and a long list of other responsibilities.

Brynn's husband, Jeremy,

was also up early, helping with the family before heading off to his job

as a dentist a mile and a half away, in the center of Paradise.

- And he’s like, “Hey Brynn, have you looked outside?”

And I was like, “Yeah, it’s kinda weird.”

And the sun was super orange, and I was like, “I don't know if it's the sunrise.

I don't know what's going on.”

- Brynn quickly hopped on Facebook to see if anyone knew the cause of the orange sky.

- And I saw that there had been a fire,

that people were reporting a fire, but it was not a big deal at all.

- She casually updated Jeremy on what she read online and they continued

to go about their morning. And Jeremy eventually left for work.

After all, this was not the first fire sky

they had seen in her many years living in Paradise.

Ten years earlier, the east side of town had been evacuated

and Brynn was able to help load a car full of her in-laws belongings

in case the fire jumped the canyon and took out those homes

on the edge of town, which included Jeremy's parents.

- The whole neighborhood was covered in fire

trucks. And there was a fire truck for every other house.

- They seemed ready to combat the flames should they reach those homes.

But the hidden truth was, even that many trucks would have been lacking.

- They had told us later that if the fire would have jumped the canyon,

that it would have spread so fast that they would have just

it would have been body bags. Like there would have been no saving,

which was interesting.

- Interesting and unknowingly foretelling.

And during that 2008 evacuation of only the east side of Paradise,

the few roadways out of town had choked up with bumper-to-bumper gridlock,

making it clear that there was a need for wider roads

in and out of town for future potential evacuations.

But claiming roads need to be

widened is different than actually finding the funds to make it happen

while the sky is blue and there's no visible immediate threat.

So the roads stayed skinny on their small town diet.

And in 2008, that fire never jumped the canyon, and soon,

evacuees were allowed to go back home and keep living their lives.

Beyond that, Brynn herself had been evacuated twice before,

but never overnight and never under what felt like a very real threat,

even when a fire started closer to her house.

- My goodness, I sound like an idiot.

We went to the canyon to watch it.

Yeah.

And as people are evacuating, we're like, this is not a big deal.

Don't even worry about this.

- It's true that skies over vast stretches of California are orange

on a regular basis, due to random wildfires frequently burning around the state.

- The skyline of San Francisco looking more like an image from Mars.

The orange glow from wildfires burning miles away, shrouding the city's landmarks.

The smoke blocking out the sun.

- Even for me, living just a few miles away from Disneyland,

I, too, have experienced California's brown and orange skies and falling ash.

And after a while, I mean, you do kind of get used to it.

Which was how Brynn was feeling on the morning of November 8th, 2018.

- Just kind of went about our morning, and my husband left for work

and was seeing patients, and

he actually had a patient come in and say, “Have you... have you looked outside?”

- Jeremy and others from his dental practice stepped outside and looked around them.

- The sky had gotten super black and dark and they were starting to have, um,

big, huge chunks of charcoal

leaves, burnt leaves falling down, ash, huge ash.

- So much falling ash that it sounded as though it was raining.

But of course, it wasn't rain at all.

Jeremy's office phone rang and he picked it up.

The voice on the other end was an off

duty firefighter looking to actually get a hold of someone else.

But when he realized he was talking to Jeremy, he went on to tell him

that he should probably get out of Paradise.

So, Jeremy and the staff switched gears, locked up their office,

and they left, heading back to their homes around the town.

The large size of the falling ash was less familiar

than what previous nearby fires had produced in Paradise,

but surely firefighters would be able to contain it, or at least divert it.

- He was home by maybe 8:30

and I was like, “Well, do you think we should like pack up some stuff?”

And so

we started packing up some stuff and I woke up McKell,

and I was like, “Hey McKell, there's... there's like this fire,

so we're just going to pack up some stuff and evacuate.”

But it's so funny how it really was

not a big deal. Like, for probably an hour,

the homeschool friends were like, “Oh, let's not go to your house.

That's probably... let's just go stay over at this side of town

and then we'll just avoid any fire complications.”

And so we were even still planning on doing homeschooling

and doing... just going on with our daily lives

without having any idea really what was going on.

- November 8th, 2018, 8:35.

- Fire and Rescue. - CHP transferring.

Go ahead with the address.

- Hello?

- Hi, there's a fire on our property.

It's like, it's huge.

Go get the kids in the car now!

Just go! - All right,

Ashley. We have help on the way.

Okay?

- Interestingly enough, over recent months, the leader of Brynn's local church

congregation had had a feeling that something big was going to happen

soon -- something that could involve an evacuation, even.

So, their church had really been stressing the importance of emergency

preparedness to its members. Even just a month and a half earlier,

their church had had a special Sunday school lesson around

emergency preparedness and fire evacuation.

Brynn had been helping

with the primary kids at that time, but Jeremy had attended.

- And he came home

and told me about it and I was like, “Oh my goodness, can we give it a rest?

Like, this is like the third time we've done this like the last six months.”

I’m like, stop.

And so he came home and he wrote

a list of things that he would want in case an evacuation,

and stuck it up on our kitchen wall.

And so we had our home kind of laid out.

Like, we had extra totes that we could just put things in.

We had bookshelves that we could just grab the entire shelf of books.

And we had a list.

- So Brynn and Jeremy just started going down the list, packing things

the way they had been instructed should an evacuation order ever come up.

And as they packed, they began to notice the sound of more traffic

than was usual on the small town road behind their house.

Soon they got a phone call.

It was Jeremy's parents who still lived on the East side of town.

They said,

- “Hey, there's a fire in our backyard.

We think you should evacuate.”

- The east side of town,

overlooked the canyon toward the origin of the fire.

While it wasn't good news that fire was so near Jeremy's parents’ house,

it made sense that they would be some of the first people to see it coming,

just based on the location of their home.

Brynn checked Facebook again.

She knew that Paradise was zoned for evacuations.

I mean, 14 zones, to be exact.

Maybe she could find more information about which zones

were supposed to get out.

- Somebody was like, “Oh, yeah, people are hearing

that there's a full evacuation,

but it's not. Only these zones are supposed to evacuate, so don't evacuate

if your zone hasn't come up,” which was not true.

- What they didn't know was that at 8:02 a.m.,

before Jeremy even left his dental office to come back home,

the decision had been made. The entire town of Paradise,

all 28,000 of its residents, along with those of nearby communities,

were supposed to evacuate and evacuate

immediately.

Just a couple of hours earlier, around 6:30 a.m.,

around the time that Brynn was probably getting out of bed to start her day,

sparks from a nearly 100-year-old piece of PG&E electrical grid

equipment had ignited the brush seven miles east of Paradise,

near the remote location of Camp Creek Road.

- Copy. Possible powerline down.

We have eyes on the vegetation fire.

It's going to be very difficult to access. Camp Creek Road in nearly inaccessible.

It is on the west side of the river,

underneath the transmission lines, have about a 35 mile an hour

sustained wind on it.

We’ll keep working on access.

I’m gonna go up the highway to try to get a little better idea on

how to get to it.

The possibility that we might have to come in off the top of

Concow Road.

Flea Mountain.

- While the fire was a manageable size when the fire department was first

notified,

the makeshift road leading to the fire at that time

was just too dangerous for a large fire truck to travel.

So the fire department requested air support to drop water

on this fire from above.

But with the winds moving as fast as they were, it was just too windy to fly.

So the fire continued to quickly spread out of reach. In fact,

winds had been so strong for a few days before the fire, to the point

that PG&E was sending out

automated phone messages to Paradise residents the night before,

stating that they may turn off the power in order to avoid any wildfires

sparking up in the area.

- To protect public safety,

PG&E may also temporarily turn off power in your neighborhood or community.

- I just remember sitting around my parents’ dining room table

and a whole bunch of us just gathered around talking about the

the power outages that were going to happen, how it’s gonna be windy.

- But the power never went out.

And now that it was the next day, concern had become reality.

But even still, soon after igniting, the fire was approaching

the small settlement of Concow, home to about 700 residents,

where firefighters were on hand, ready to defend that town.

Having to defend Paradise wasn't really on anyone's minds.

- Fire & Rescue. What is the address of the emergency?

- I don't have an address. I’m in Chico on the Skyway

headed-- - Are you looking towards Pulga and Concow?

- Uh, I don't... I don't know what those are. I’m not from here, so...

But I'm headed up to Paradise. Should I turn around? Or...

- No, there's nothing going on in Paradise.

We do have a fire in the [inaudible] area, so...

- Okay.

I don't know where that’s at, but-- - It’s not in Paradise.

Thank you for calling.

- But then the wind picked up and fire began to spread more rapidly,

heading straight for the canyon below that east ridge of Paradise.

The canyon that ten years earlier fire hadn't jumped.

And so it never reached the town.

But fire officials had said that if it had, it would have been a disaster.

Well, now the fire was back,

threatening that same very canyon.

Only this time, it was only a matter of minutes when it jumped it.

- Fire & Rescue.

- Ok, so there’s a fire in my yard.

- The fire is where?

- It’s in my yard!

- It’s in your backyard?

How big is it?

- It's just getting big by the second.

It's like, my whole backyard’s smoking. It’s coming up to my house!

- Okay.

- Okay. - We’ll do what we can. Thanks for the call.

Thank you.

- Can anyone come on Pentz Road right now

and come to my house to stop it?

- Ma'am, we have engines coming from everywhere.

Okay? - Okay.

- Thank you.

- I'm on Pentz Road. I’m standing outside.

- Okay.

- Okay, bye. - Bye.

Fire & Rescue. - We have--

We have a fire on Jordan Hill Road.

- Okay, well there's a major fire in Concow.

- Yeah, well, there's another one

that just started on Jordan Hill Road, and it's spreading super fast.

It's on the mountain across from me, and I can see the flames.

- Okay, ma'am, we have fires everywhere from this major fire.

We're doing everything we can, and we're getting resources mobilized.

- Okay. In the area, as fast as we can.

- Okay? - All right, well, I...

I can't put it out, so... - I know.

I know. We're getting as much stuff there as we can,

as we speak.

- All right. It just started, but it's spreading really fast.

- Okay. - All right?

- Thank you. - Yup, bye.

- Fire & Rescue.

- Hey, we had a fire at the Lutheran church at Pentz and Billie.

- Where are you at, sir? Pentz and what?

- Pentz and Billie. - Yes, sir.

The fire is moving very rapidly.

If I were you, I would evacuat the area.

Are you guys able to get out? - No, no.

The fire is behind the church.

- Yes, sir.

I realize that. It’s also in Noble Orchards.

Yes, it's in Paradise.

Is that what you’re-- - It’s right behind me.

It's right there. - Yes, I realize that, sir.

There are multiple fires, multiple spots going on right now,

and not enough resources to go to all of them.

If you felt threatened, I would evacuate the area.

We are evacuating. - Okay.

Yeah, yeah, we're trying to get people there,

but it's just, it's really

blowing up very rapidly right now and it's overwhelming us.

Okay, bye.

- Thank you. We got to go. - Okay.

- Before it was even 8:00, flames had crossed into Paradise,

starting on the east side with spot fires quickly bouncing in west,

carried by the winds and moving at insane speeds.

An evacuation order was first given for the east side of town.

- Again, issued for all of Pentz Road and Paradise East.

- But that was followed only 18 minutes later by an order

that all of Paradise should actually evacuate.

- All of paradise

now reportedly under mandatory evacuations.

Please leave the area immediately

and do not try and reenter.

- And that was at 8:02 a.m.

At 8:02,

Jeremy was still at his dental office a few miles away,

and Brynn was still talking with her home school co-op

about where the best location would be for them to meet that day.

Neither of them received any official evacuation notice.

Paradise had put in place an opt-in emergency notification

phone system, but few people were even aware of it yet.

And out of those who had opted in, notifications still never arrived

for many of them, possibly because nearby cell phone

equipment had been damaged by the fire or something.

Many in the town

were still sleeping in bed, completely unaware

that flames were crawling toward their door, or even sprinting there.

In many other evacuations, emergency personnel will often go through

neighborhoods, bang on doors, or at least call out over vehicle

loudspeakers that everyone needs to get up and leave immediately.

But in this situation, fire was spreading so incredibly fast

that it completely overwhelmed emergency personnel,

putting first responders into rescue mode, trying to save lives.

They didn't have enough boots on the ground to be able to act as in-person

notifiers. And calls continued to pour in to 911.

- Fire & Rescue. - I just called a minute ago.

There's a fire.

My wife said the fire is on my property. - Yes, sir.

- I have neighbors that I can’t get ahold of. - Sir, sir--

Yeah.

I need you to just evacuate. Try to knock on their door and wake them up,

but you need to evacuate.

You're under mandatory evacuation, and we are aware that there's fire everywhere.

- Okay, but we haven't seen anybody go over there yet!

Not one person. - Sir.

We have this fire everywhere. We're doing our best to get to all of it.

Please, just evacuate.

- Okay, well, there’s old people around--

Please just evacuate. - All right, all right.

Just west

of the center of town where Brynn's family lived,

Brynn and her oldest daughter each used a cell phone to film

the family's belongings bit by bit throughout the house,

a step taken in the unlikely event that their home actually burned,

and insurance would need to know what to replace.

By this time, their church had actually sent out an evacuation

notice to its members, confirming the need to leave.

But given past evacuations, it didn't feel terribly urgent.

Jeremy's mom, Ruth, who had been one of the people

to first sound the alarm of the fire they saw in their backyard off the east

ridge, drove to Brynn's house and offered to take

the girls and evacuate with them so that Brynn and Jeremy

could stay behind and finish packing family belongings into their two cars

without having to simultaneously worry about the kids.

So, Brynn's daughters, again, in sixth grade, third grade, and one who was three years old,

went with Grandma Ruth and drove off, leaving Brynn and Jeremy

behind to load their two cars with the stuff that they wanted to keep.

As soon as Ruth got onto the

main evacuation road with her granddaughters in her car, her heart sank.

It was bumper-to-bumper traffic.

The way that Paradise is laid out,

there are only four roads that really leave the town,

and three of those four roads were these

small one-lane-each-way roads.

The fourth road, acting as the town's main thoroughfare,

was called Skyway, offering two lanes each way.

And then it had this median in between oncoming traffic.

When the evacuation notice was given, police had turned all lanes

on all four of these roads to outbound in hopes of getting people out faster.

But one of the smaller roads was already on fire,

and with 28,000 residents to evacuate, the others were completely gridlocked

with fire fast approaching, literally all of them.

But Ruth had gotten out early enough to at least

be making some progress forward, albeit at a snail's pace.

And after driving a mile and a half down

Skyway for what felt like forever, police

then diverted her off of Skyway and down one of those smaller roads.

This one was called Neal Road.

But as she followed police's instructions,

she noticed that Skyway, especially the inbound lanes of Skyway,

were much more open and traffic was moving much more rapidly in those lanes

while she was stuck at a crawl on Neal.

And so she called her son Jeremy.

- And said, “Don't divert down Neal Road.

Just go down the opposite side of Skyway, the inbound side of Skyway.

Traffic is moving way faster and you're going to get out of town

way faster if you exit inbound Skyway.”

- They took note of the recommendation and continued to pack.

- We were able to pack up two cars.

We were able to go down that list of things that we wanted and

and basically get things that we wanted.

But we really thought we were coming back.

We did not think that we were going to lose everything.

And so, of course, I would have grabbed even more stuff.

But, I was like, oh, this is not that big a deal.

- Around 10:15, as Brynn and Jeremy continued to pack,

they noticed the sky get darker and darker.

- And there was a lot more ash falling.

But it was... it was so interesting how like at the beginning, in the morning,

it wasn't that big a deal.

And then as the morning progressed, it still wasn't that big a deal.

And then, I don't know, I still actually kind of feel stupid

because I was like, “Hey, Jerry. Do you think we should go?”

And he's like, “Yeah, I think we should leave.”

- Brynn actually hadn't gotten the memo that Jeremy's parents

had literally seen fire in their physical backyard,

so she hadn't been aware just how close the fire already was.

She and Jeremy didn't know that just a couple of miles away in

almost every direction from their house,

countless structures and cars were already ablaze with thousands of residents

trapped in gridlock, surrounded by flames and completely terrified.

But, 45 minutes

after Ruth had taken Brynn's children out of town, the falling ash

was so large that it became quite obvious that time was up.

They needed to leave.

- And so we started going through our neighbors to make sure

that our neighbors had evacuated.

And then I went down to my parents’ house to see how they were doing.

And I grabbed my music binder

for the Christmas program to make sure that I had that.

- They drove their two cars down their neighborhood street, checking on neighbors

on the way out until they came to a stop sign to exit the neighborhood,

only to find bumper-to-bumper cars stretching on for miles.

- So another really tender mercy was that as soon as I got to the stop

sign, a car actually waved me into the line.

- She held her hand out the window, signifying that she had two

cars, waited for Jeremy to catch up behind her,

and yet again, the two of them were waved in

to be able to merge into the traffic jam. Which, I gotta say,

is pretty impressively selfless if you think about it.

I mean, how many times have we been less enthusiastic as drivers

to let someone merge in front of us because maybe we're late for something?

Or maybe we're not even late, but we just feel like stubbornly entitled

to be ahead of them in line for some reason.

And for these people, the sky was as black as night

with large charred ash falling like rain.

I mean, there was clearly

a very real threat to the lives of any person stuck on the road,

and yet, people still managed to forget themselves and help others.

And without those small acts of kindness, which actually weren't that small at all,

if you think about it, who knows how long Brynn

and Jeremy would have been stuck at that stop sign?

About 100 yards after the stop sign was the entrance to Skyway,

which was still bumper-to-bumper, barely moving

worse than before when Ruth was on it.

As Brynn and Jeremy

inched their way into the intersection, they noticed

their friend Joel, a police officer, who was directing traffic.

So Jeremy rolled down his window.

- Jeremy said, “Hey Joel, is there anything that we can do for you?”

He’s like, “Actually, Sarah

and the kids are sitting there in the truck in the parking lot,

and if you could take them out, I would really appreciate it.”

And so we pulled over and Sarah and her two kids

got into our Honda Accord, which Jeremy had been driving.

And Jeremy got into the Honda Pilot, which I was driving, and Jeremy took the lead.

And then we started driving down Paradise

and it was just bumper- to-bumper traffic.

- With Sarah now driving their sedan, Brynn and Jeremy were now in the same car

together, their Honda SUV, with Jeremy driving and Brynn sitting in the seat

behind him.

Brynn's computer sat shotgun. And as they inched along,

some people took to foot along the route.

- It was super slow and there was one guy hitchhiking

and we unrolled the window and said, “Hey, would you like a ride?”

He's like, “No, I'm walking faster than you're driving.”

- But they eventually came upon another guy in his twenties looking down on his luck,

maybe a bit, and he was walking with his thumb out.

- So we picked up some hitchhiker.

I don't even know his name.

So there was some guy in our backseat. And as we got like a mile down the road,

maybe not even a mile, like we could see flames.

I was like, what?

Brynn's heart was filled with shock and sadness.

This wasn't at all like previous evacuations -- evacuations for fire

that never, frankly, materialized.

This time, fire was really here,

and it was destroying the very scenes she had walked and played in for years.

- Like it was neighborhoods that I had grown up with.

I mean, it was... it was in town.

And so that's when I turned on my cell phone.

- I gotta record this.

- You can hear the hitchhiker they picked up talk about turning on his own camera

as well.

And even though Brynn wasn't the kind of person to use her phone camera often,

she knew she had to film what she was seeing for her brother,

who had grown up in the town, but no longer lived there.

I mean, how else would he believe what she was seeing?

And if you're able to watch this on our website or on YouTube,

you'll see that everything around them is on fire.

- You would have guessed from watching the video that it was midnight

because by the time

we were heading out, it was super dark. It's like 10:45 in the morning.

So we're driving by neighborhoods of homes that are just up in flames

and trees are up in flames and grass and everything is in flames.

And if it's not in flames,

the flames are quickly approaching it and they're going to go up in flames.

And so basically all sides of the roads

were totally engulfed in flames.

- Every home, every business, every tree was burning.

- And as we're passing, I see, like, business owners and cops and all these people

that I know are directing traffic and trying to get cars moving.

And so we got down to where

Neal Road turns off left.

And Jeremy had heard from his mom

to go to the inbound road on Skyway.

And so he actually ignored the guy that was directing traffic down Neal Road,

and we just zoomed off right passed him and went on Skyway

and then it was too late to turn back.

- Just as Jeremy's mom had seen, there was significantly less traffic

on the double inbound lanes of Skyway, allowing Brynn and Jeremy to drive

at a comparatively whopping 35 miles per hour.

And soon they discovered why. Shortly after the Neal Road intersection,

the inbound and outbound lanes of Skyway are separated by a large stretch of land

between them, with trees and even some structures and homes and such.

And as Jeremy and Brynn got to that isolated part of the road,

they found themselves not just looking at flames, but part of them.

- We went from being surrounded by flames

to being engulfed by flames and having the flames cross over the road.

And you could see the ash and flames crossing over the road and closing in.

- Brynn pushed record on her phone once more.

- Oh...

- Bright, hot flames burn up to the very asphalt they drive on.

Flaming ash and embers are hitting the windshield

and the windows, which were hot to the touch.

They feared their tires would melt, unaware that the larger threat

was the fire sucking all the oxygen out of the engine and grinding it to a stop.

- I remember thinking, I don't mind dying, but I don't want to die like this.

So, I remember being okay

with the concept of death.

I just didn't want to burn alive.

- Brynn knew if they didn't make it, she had amazing family who would be sure

to take care of her daughters if that was to be how this ended.

And as they drove

through what felt like a mortal portrayal of hell on Earth,

Brynn did the one thing she could think of do.

She prayed.

- Heavenly Father, please help us.

Please help us to be safe.

I’m thankful for...

Jeremy and his willingness to be brave.

I think I started praying because there was nothing else that I could do.

And having like a strong belief in God, I believe in miracles.

I believe in tender mercies.

And if there was any time in my life that I needed

a miracle or a tender mercy, it was then.

- Thier SUV continued forward with their friends

following, terrified, in the sedan behind them.

At times, clouds of smoke engulfed them, making it impossible

to see where they were going or how to even keep the car on the road.

- We got to one point

that we actually couldn't see ahead of us, so it was kind of a wall of smoke

and that was like, okay, are we driving into a wall of flames?

Or, I mean, what are we driving into?

And that's, I think,

when we really felt like, okay, I think this is it, I think this is when we die.

- They brace themselves as they drive headfirst into the wall of thick smoke,

not knowing if these would be their last moments on earth.

But seconds later,

they emerge out the other side into a different world, a calm world.

The darkness eased, the surrounding orange had turned blue.

They had made it out alive.

- I prayed because I knew that we were most likely going to die

because it was dark, and there was fire on the road

and we had no idea what was going on ahead of us.

And in reality, we weren’t really in that a very long time,

but those few seconds we were there were really scary.

And, I don't know. I just have a lot of respect for Jeremy to just keep going.

- Jeremy never faltered or panicked.

- It was really scary for him too, because he's thinking,

“I just killed my wife, and I just killed the family behind us.

Like, I just killed all of us.”

- Police must have been sending people down Neal Road instead of Skyway

because they must have known that flames were engulfing Skyway at that very moment.

That said, while the exit by way of Neal Road at

the time was not yet this fiery inferno that Brynn and Jeremy had just been through,

eventually all the roads were pretty much engulfed in flames, and videos documenting

the terrifying moments of car occupants can be found all over the internet.

And while Brynn and Jeremy were surrounded by some incredibly intense flames

by turning onto the inbound lanes of Skyway, cars on the outbound

lanes of Skyway were having to drive through a similarly horrifying scene,

only stuck in gridlocked traffic with literally nowhere else to go.

- It was such a terrible experience for thousands and thousands

and thousands of people.

- Fire & Rescue. - We are trapped at Ponderosa Elementary School.

- Why are you trapped? - In the back on the basketball court,

there's six cars. - Okay.

Why are you trapped, though?

- We're trapped like, Pentz is on fire and we couldn’t get out because of the traffic

so somebody said to come back here and go through the fence [inaudible]

And we can’t get through.

- Okay, you need to-- you need to do whatever you can to get in vehicles and drive out.

There's no one to come help you right now.

There's no one to come help you right now.

If you need to drive through a fence, then do it.

- By the time Brynn and Jeremy had entered the flames,

they were still unaware that the inferno had already trapped and terrified

thousands of people in homes, cars and buildings around Paradise,

With traffic at a standstill and roads transformed into these tunnels of fire,

some sort protection in a tiny antique shop, as well as the Paradise

Alliance Church, which had been fortified beforehand for emergencies like this.

The few open spaces with less trees that existed

like the K-mart parking lot and also this gravel property out there,

and there was a slab of cement near one of the more crowded intersections,

these were turned into emergency gathering places for trapped residents.

A dozen people even dove into a nearby reservoir for safety.

Cars caught fire and had to be abandoned in the middle of narrow roads,

blocking the way forward until this awesome bulldozer

driver came through and basically saved a ton of lives.

You should look that up online.

It's... there's some great stories there.

But literally out of the ashes came

stories of great humanity

through small and large acts of kindness and courage.

As cars caught fire, their occupants could only escape

into nearby vehicles of complete strangers who welcomed them in,

even though they were uncertain of their own fate.

- You can get in! - The New York Times tells the story of this woman

who had led a hard life and she had tried to actually commit suicide

multiple times prior to this day, only to decide that she wanted

to live through this specific moment as she was surrounded by flames.

And when her car caught fire, she took refuge with a calm stranger

who literally drove through flames to save them both,

speaking words of comfort to her along the way.

- We have a fire on

campus now, and I need ambulances.

- An entire hospital in town

had to be evacuated, with doctors and nurses taking patients

into their own personal vehicles as flaming ash rained down upon them.

- Yes. - Everybody’s clear. All the patients are out from downstairs.

- You rock. - I don't know about staff, but we got them all out.

- Okay, very good.

- A woman who had just had

c-section surgery was placed into one of the few ambulances,

and then her newborn daughter was placed in another car with her husband.

And her husband and daughter got out,

but the ambulance... - Cal Fire Emergency.

- Hi, this is [inaudible] with Butte County EMS. - Hi.

- Hey, I've got one ambulance that is on fire at Pentz Road and Chloe Lane,

and I have another one trapped by fire.

I need a fire-- If you can get somebody in there, that’d be great.

- Yeah, we're pretty thin.

We're doing our very best to get everywhere. But where is it at?

Pentz and what? Cooey? - Chloe Lane... Chloe Court.

- Chloe Court?

- And Pentz Road.

- Okay, we'll do our best.

- Okay, because they can't get out, so we need somebody in there.

- Yep. We're doing our best.

- Thank you.

- Fire & Rescue. - This is [inaudible].

- Hi there. - Hi. I need you to talk to my charge.

Our medics are trapped, and they are on fire.

- The ambulance is on fire?

- Yes, it is. This is Jenny [inaudible].

There’s two ambulances

at Pentz and Chloe Lane. They have patients on board and staff with them

and they actually are on fire.

We need a unit soon. Now. Like, 15 minutes ago.

- Okay.

We're going to get someone out there.

- We're literally-- - And both ambulances are burning?

- Both of them.

- Okay, we’ll get them out there.

- K, who’s your closest-- - I don't know right now. Jenny,

I can't give you anything else with that except to tell you

that we will send a response. That’s the best I can do.

- Got it.

- With the ambulance on fire and very few emergency resources able

to reach those inside, the ambulance crew unloaded the three

patients, including this woman who was still numb from her C-section,

in front of the only house in sight that hadn't yet burned to the ground.

One of the paramedics was able to break into the home using a doggy door,

and the patients were then hustled into

the garage as fire was raining down upon them.

With nurses, a pediatrician, and others who had joined this group,

there were 13 people total huddled together in that garage,

probably expecting to be engulfed by flames.

But then, Paradise Fire Chief found this group

and started assigning the paramedics and nurses tasks to help deter

the fire from the property in hopes that it would save their lives.

Everyone who was physically capable got to work.

Some climbed on the roof and sprayed it down with hoses.

Others cleared pine needles from the gutters around the house,

and for two hours they basically stayed there, bunkered down

and working hard as flames encircled the house and burned down

literally the remaining neighbor's homes.

But in the end, they survived, and so did that house,

one of the few standing homes left in the entire town.

And that's just one story of many.

In the case of Jeremy and Brynn, once their vehicle had emerged from the flames

under a daylit sky, they continued down Skyway

a few more miles until they reached a stoplight.

- And I remember, like, there were just hundreds of people lining

the sides of the road and looking up and turning around and having this...

this... like this huge, almost like mushroom cloud of black smoke.

And you could actually see flames.

- I can't even imagine how those people must have felt lining the streets

with what was likely all the possessions they now had to their names.

Maybe they were grateful to be alive, but devastated at their loss.

I mean, maybe great anxiety filled them about the other family members or friends

who hadn't yet emerged from that terrifying scene.

Or even more likely, maybe they were just in shock, struggling

to even be able to process this reality that was in front of them.

Jeremy and Brynn went on to drop Sarah and her kids off with a friend

in a nearby town.

Then they dropped off this hitchhiker, and then they headed down

to nearby Yuba City to a family member's home.

- Jeremy and I were in different cars and just driving along

and looking off to the left and just seeing

like everything... this big black, gray smoke.

And like, probably being in shock and... I mean, hard to believe,

hard to, like, wrap your head around, “Oh my goodness, everything is on fire.”

- This wasn't just a house she lived in.

This was the world she had been born and raised in. The town

where she had always been surrounded by friends and loving family.

A town that in many ways had given her a life worthy of its name.

And just in a matter of hours, it was completely gone.

Brynn stayed close to her phone,

trying to gather as much information as possible.

Once the family was all accounted for in Yuba City,

they packed up what they had and they drove 145 miles

east to Truckee, California, where the family had a cabin near

the California state border, not too far from Reno, Nevada.

- I got a text from a friend,

like a girls group that I was in. She’s like, “My house is gone.”

And then one by one, people in the text group were texting,

“My house is gone.” “My house is gone.”

- But still no word about their own house.

That night was a sleepless night for most in that cabin for many reasons.

The next morning was Brynn's oldest daughter's birthday, which is,

I’ve got to say, some rather unfortunate timing.

The original birthday celebration plan had been to visit

the Sacramento temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,

which is their faith, where her daughter would get to participate in doing

what's considered baptisms by proxy, which is baptisms

for people who have passed away without having a chance to be baptized.

And it's something that you were able to do when you turned 12 years old.

And Latter-day Saints consider it to be a sacred act of service.

And it was something that Brynn's daughter

wanted to do as soon as she was old enough.

But with the last minute trip to Truckee, far from Sacramento,

they were able to keep their birthday plans by simply switching locations,

driving around 30 miles to the Reno temple instead of the Sacramento temple.

- Right as we were getting into Reno, kind of pulling up to the temple,

I got a text from my friend, Scott,

that said, “I'm sorry to tell you, but your house is gone.”

And so

we walked into the temple and told our kids that our houses were gone.

- Given that they were a family of faith, to the point that Brynn had even turned

to open prayer while filming such a fearful moment in her life,

although they lost everything, it felt like a tender mercy

to be in that setting when they shared the news with their family.

Perhaps a reminder that they still had something left.

When the flames

were finally out after 17 days,

what was known as the Camp Fire, named after the road on which it started,

had taken 85 lives, not just in Paradise,

but also in neighboring communities of Concow, Magalia,

and Butte Creek Canyon, who saw much of the same devastation,

but who actually haven't gotten much of the same national sympathy and support

in the aftermath because they don't have Paradise on their driver's license.

The fire preyed upon the most vulnerable.

Many of those who died were elderly or unable to drive,

dying in their homes or trapped in their vehicles.

18,804 structures were destroyed,

including nearly 90% of all the homes in the town of Paradise.

Most businesses were destroyed and Jeremy's dental practice was among them.

Interestingly enough,

the performing arts center where Brynn's family had hosted

the annual Christmas music program, was one of the few still standing.

A ghost of many good memories.

Not long after the fire, Brynn went to a local department store

in neighboring Chico to pick up some necessities

after having lost so many belongings.

- And I was talking to the checkout

woman, who had also lost her home,

and she was also a Christian who believed in God.

And she said, “Why? Why me?

Why did this happen to me?”

And I remember thinking, “Why not?”

Like, who... who says that

our life is supposed to be perfect, and that everything's going to go well.

And I think sometimes we think because we are disciples

of Jesus Christ, that everything is going to go perfectly.

And I don't think that's what it's for.

I think it's for us to experience these things and learn to rely on

Jesus Christ, which I'm not really that great at.

- Brynn ended up

uploading the video of the fiery inferno a few hours after her escape,

where it was quickly picked up by news stations around the world.

CNN, NBC, ABC, you name it.

They were all sharing footage of the prayer she had said amidst the flames.

- I was actually later told that there are quite a few videos of it, but

most of them there was swearing.

And so they couldn’t come on national television.

Which, I’m like, “Hey, those people had every right to swear in that situation.”

- Holy sh[bleep] [bleep]

- The aftermath of the fire

had an effect, not just on those who had evacuated or lost homes

and businesses, but on residents of nearby towns. With

tens of thousands of people evacuating Paradise and nearby settlements,

the nearby city of Chico suddenly experienced a surge of people

in need, most of them now homeless,

some having literally nowhere else to go.

- The snowball effect and ramifications that people don't even consider were huge.

- Hotels filled up instantly.

Traffic skyrocketed, storage units filled, and the city sewer system maxed out.

- Because people were so out of it,

there were lot of accidents

because,

you know, just people weren’t thinking, people were hurrying.

And then soon after, because there were so many

financial aids and so much humanitarian,

actually there was a huge influx of homeless population that came in.

- Housing in Chico exploded with sellers suddenly able to bring in additional

hundreds of thousands of dollars above the original asking price.

Renters were evicted so that landlords

could sell their properties at these high purchase prices.

- Paradisans were the ones that lost our homes, but it didn't affect just us.

It... it affected definitely, definitely Chico and and the whole county.

- And beyond that.

while some families homes

had miraculously survived the fire and were still standing,

the entire town of Paradise was deemed a hazard

and inaccessible for at least six weeks afterwards.

- So these people that

didn't lose their homes were just as homeless as everyone else,

and they weren't

getting a lot of the compassion because, “Well, you didn't lose your home.”

“Yeah, but I can't access my home.

I can't access my town. I can't access my life there.”

- But among all the chaos, the loss,

the devastation and uncertainty, there was kindness.

- Businesses that donated bikes

and shoes and backpacks and school supplies and books.

And a library of books.

And outfitted schools and

jackets and free food.

Like, you could go into restaurants, certain restaurants, and get free meals.

Like every Tuesday.

- Donations poured into charities and crowdfunding sites for individual families

and nonprofit organizations that were overseeing Camp Fire aid.

Hundreds of donation pages for Camp Fire victims are still active on GoFundMe,

and they total at least hundreds of thousands, although probably more like

millions of dollars in donations from people around the world, accompanied

by personal messages from strangers offering words of kindness and support.

Paradise Unified School District was so overwhelmed

by book donations that they ran out of room to accept them.

A North American quilting group handmade

more than 1200 quilts and pillowcases and donated them to the school

to be distributed to individual children in hopes of bringing personalized comfort

that each child was cared for by people they didn't even know.

Just days after the fire, a 90-year-old successful businessman in San Diego

wrote personal checks for $1,000 each to 980 students

and 105 teachers and staff of Paradise High School

so that they would have instant access to money

that would be needed to purchase essentials in the short term.

Combined, that gesture cost this man $1.1 million.

An ICU nurse who had risked his life and sacrifice his Toyota pickup truck

to transport patients back and forth through the flames away from

danger was awarded a new free Toyota Tundra by Toyota USA,

and he even had it painted to look like it had been charred by flames.

Churches and

individuals jumped in to donate food, clothing, shampoo, soap,

shoes, money and pretty much any other resource you could think of.

And then they physically came together for hours and days on end to pack

and distribute anything that was needed by those who had suddenly lost everything.

- It was horrific, but it kind of restored your hope and humanity.

- Sergeant Daron Wyatt, a trusted 32-year police veteran who normally

worked in Anaheim, California, was one of 57 public information

officers called the Camp Fire to be responsible for relaying information

between the incident management team and, like, the public and the media.

With his special expertise, Daron was the one information officer

assigned the unique responsibility of working

directly with the Butte County Sheriff for two and a half weeks, where he saw

humanity play out in some of its purest forms.

For one,

- There’s a sergeant from the town of Paradise Police Department.

- A sergeant who had lost everything he possessed in the fire,

and yet he was still working.

Like so many who lived there.

And while this sergeant was working, likely processing his own unknown future,

he learned of a woman from Paradise whose father's ashes had been left behind

during the evacuation, possibly sitting in its own

heap of ash from the home she once occupied.

And since the entire town was closed to the public, there was no way

she could go find these last mortal remains of the man who had raised her.

- And he went in and found them, recovered them,

and brought them back and delivered them to her.

- Daron was there when the sergeant presented the ashes to the woman

who just broke down in gratitude.

- She's sobbing and hugging him, and it was just so emotional for both of them.

- Daron himself coordinated how to help another woman

who worked as a local wedding and event photographer who had been forced to leave

all of her photography hard drives behind during the chaos of evacuating.

- Her house was fine, but she was in the evacuation zone

and she was afraid that she'd lose all the stuff, and there

was... many of her photographs were of, ya know,

people at their engagement and wedding photos and stuff

like that, that the pictures were taken at this particular

landmark bridge in Butte County and the bridge had been destroyed.

So there's a lot of sentimental value to having those.

- The photographer knew that most of her clients’ physical photos,

the ones that had been hanging on walls or tucked into photo

albums, were likely destroyed in the fire.

Photos of good memories at many locations that were now burned to ashes.

And if those physical photos were destroyed, people's only hope of

getting those pictures back was dependent on retrieving those hard drives.

- So we actually sent one of our public information officers.

She gave us her keys. He went in.

He recovered everything and brought it back to her.

She was just extremely thankful.

- So thankful, that she kept in touch with Daron for years afterwards.

- Typically, we wouldn't do something like that,

but it seemed to have so much meaning,

you know, that if something happened, it's not--

wasn’t just for her.

It was for all of her clients and the entire community to have

this stuff available.

- Daron saw donation after donation come in first hand.

- People that were coming in and bringing clothing to donate to

the people who had lost everything. And not just the

you know, the Patagonias and the big companies, but families

that would go out of the area and buy packs of socks and underwear

and t-shirts

and jackets and pants and bring them and say, hey,

these are for the people that have lost their stuff.

- With Thanksgiving

only a couple of weeks after the fire, the founder of Sierra Nevada Brewery

hosted a free Thanksgiving feast to displaced survivors of the Camp Fire.

This morning, - This morning I boiled 5000 pounds of potatoes.

We used our old brew kettle that I built in 1980 to boil the potatoes in.

- With more than 50 first responders volunteering to serve the food.

- Neither one of us has a home and no belongings.

It's just everybody has been

so kind and thoughtful and it's just,

you know. It renews your faith.

- After 15% of the brewery's employees had lost their homes,

that same founder not only donated $100,000 to fire victims

through establishing a relief fund, but he then created a new brew called Resilience

Butte County Proud IPA, where the proceeds would go to Camp Fire victims.

When he reached out to other breweries across the country,

more than a whopping 1,500 of them signed up to sell the beer,

contributing millions more dollars of additional relief.

- A bunch of his employees had lost homes, so he bought like

a plot of land and brought in trailers for his employees to live in

while they were rebuilding their homes and stuff. It was incredible.

- Even a number of insurance companies, who often have a

less-than-ideal reputation in circumstances like these, stepped up to the plate.

- A lot of times you’d think, ya know, these poor people, right?

Now they gotta file their insurance claim, and how long do they have to wait?

There were some insurance companies that were coming in,

and if we could verify that the home was destroyed,

they'd write a check for the policy limit to the homeowner right there on the spot.

- Even first responders from hundreds of miles away

who weren't even called to work the Camp Fire found ways to help.

One of my favorite examples of this involved people that Daron knew

from his work back in the Anaheim Police Department in Southern California.

- The sergeant at the time calls me goes, “Hey, do you think they can use generators

up there?” I go, “Yeah, there's nothing here.

The infrastructure is destroyed.

And you know, the power companies and the cell phone companies were working

nonstop to try and get it restored,

but they had a lot going into it.”

He goes, “Well, we've got like eight or nine generators.

If you think they could use them.”

- It turns out,

the Anaheim Police Department vice detail had a bunch of generators

that had been seized from illegal marijuana grows in the city.

- They were cases that had already been adjudicated,

so they actually got a court order to release them to the town of Paradise.

- Without the generators,

the two-way radios of those working the Camp Fire only worked across

line of sight, making it really difficult to communicate over the miles of terrain

that they were covering.

But generators would be able to power the repeater system for those communications,

which would allow communications to then

bounce off the repeater and send the signals out over

long distances, helping officials to be able to talk to each other.

- I think four or five guys from the vice detail, these undercover cops, right?

Look, you know, long hair, beards, they look like, you know, hooligans.

But they rented a U-Haul truck and drove up on Thanksgiving Day

to deliver the generators.

- To which the boots on the ground were grateful.

- But it was all their idea just because they wanted to help.

- The home base

for incident management officials like Daron, along with other responders

working the fire, was a makeshift sort of mini city

set up on the fairgrounds in nearby Chico,

a place for 6,000 personnel to work and live

while they fought the fire and coordinated all related efforts.

- There were so many deputies from Butte County Sheriff's Office

and cops from Paradise PD and firefighters from Cal Fire

that were residents of the community and lost...

Literally,

they left with the clothes on their back. Some of them were working

when the fire broke out and had to get their families evacuated.

But they're there. They're embedded.

They're working.

- Daron was there when politicians visited the site.

Everyone from the president to the governor of California

and the governor elect of California.

And some may not realize it, but even those incarcerated in our own

prison systems were on site working to help with Camp Fire efforts.

- Prisoners actually work as firefighters, as hand crews.

- A few dozen nonviolent, low risk convicted criminals

actually worked to help put out the flames of the fire.

- It's a good job for them.

And now when they get out of prison, they can actually go and work

as firefighters.

- Prisoners weren't just helping to fight the fire itself, but--

They also put out what they call mobile kitchen units.

So they'd cook all the meals.

- All the meals for the 6,000 personnel on the fairgrounds.

Obviously, no easy feat.

- Former Governor Schwarzenegger actually came one day, spent the entire day there,

went in, addressed

everybody, went inside and helped cook and served meals with the prisoners.

And it was... he’s a really cool guy.

-Handing out some sandwiches

here, especially high-protein sandwiches today because I made them.

- While other political figures were surveying sites, taking

photographs and making public statements,

things that are, you know, expected of government leaders,

former California Governor and Hollywood actor Arnold Schwarzenegger

snuck into the fairgrounds to hang out with the people

no one was really thinking about: those prisoners

cooking all the food and the personnel helping in the efforts.

- This is what it’s all about.

Everyone coming together and everyone giving something back to their community.

Hasta la vista, baby.

- He all into it. He was right there.

He was loving it.

Absolutely loving it.

But there was nothing political about it.

Nothing political at all about it.

He was just there to show support for the people that were there working.

You know, that wasn't a public thing.

The public didn't come to it. Most of them probably didn't even know it.

But for the people that were there, it was a huge morale booster.

- They’re true heroes, you know, I play heroes in the movies,

but that's movies. These are the true action heroes.

- And for the 17 days or so that Daron worked on the Camp Fire,

he continued to see acts of kindness, one after another, often in unexpected ways.

- When you have something go wrong in your life,

whether it's the loss of a family member or an illness or,

you know, a theft, a big theft... people come and surround you.

And I think that that's

as bad as human nature can be on one side,

that's how good it can be on the other side.

- Brynn’s family,

now with the knowledge

that their home was gone, saw personal kindness firsthand.

Some friends with a home on the outskirts of Chico

invited them to stay long term in their own home,

where they shuffled their own kids

into shared rooms so that Brynn and Jeremy could have their own room

and then their three girls could share a room.

And they lived like this,

two families together under one roof, for three months.

- Just the way that people were willing to

sacrifice.

I mean, our friends sacrificed their house.

People sacrificed so much

to give to others.

I think there was a lot of beauty in that.

- A dental office in Chico offered Jeremy the ability to use their office

two days a week so that he could start working again.

And as people around the country saw the devastation of Paradise

on the news or on social media, donations from all around the state

and the country and even beyond started pouring in to local churches.

- They actually call it the disaster after the disaster

because there's so much crap donated

that then they have to go through all the crap and dumpster

so much stuff.

- So even if your Uncle

Joe's donated soulless high tops from 1987 didn't make the cut,

we can acknowledge the kind gesture counts something.

And while their hearts were filled with intense warmth

and gratitude for the kindness that they received from others,

Brynn was having trouble knowing what steps to take next.

- I think one thing is that

we kind of expect,

maybe as Christians, that God's going to tell us

exactly what to do, and He didn't.

And that was really hard for all of us because we kind of felt like

the Israelites wandering in the wilderness, and nobody had any idea what to do.

Nobody had any idea if they should rebuild or if they should move or if they should

set up in Chico.

- So they started looking at houses in Chico and surrounding areas,

knowing it would be possible to reestablish their lives there.

But then again, maybe it would be better

if they started over somewhere else completely.

There were advantages and disadvantages to both

and Brynn just didn't know what would be right for her family.

- Really had no idea what to do.

And so I prayed and I was like, “Heavenly Father, this is too much for me to

to look everywhere.

I need to...

I need to narrow this down.”

And I had a very strong impression that I needed

to stop looking in Chico.

- That strong feeling was enough for her.

They would go elsewhere and truly start anew.

- So that was kind of one of those things where God definitely did not

tell us, step by step, what to do.

Every once in awhile we would get little snippets.

And so now, as I look back on it, those little snippets were very influential

on what we did.

But they were very few and far between.

But they took us exactly to where we're supposed to be.

- Brynn her family now live in northern Idaho,

where they've been since five months after the fire. Brynn’s parents,

who had also lost everything in Paradise, bought a house there as well.

Why northern Idaho?

Simply put, it just felt right.

And when what would be Brynn's new Idaho church

congregation learned that they were coming,

45 people were waiting on the driveway of their new house to help them move in

when they drove up.

This community wanted Brynn and her family to know that while it may not have been

the literal piece of Paradise they had left behind,

they had found a community to call their home.

But before settling in Idaho,

a few weeks after the fire in mid-December of 2018, residents of Paradise

were finally allowed to go back to what was left of their homes.

- And it was just this line of cars lining up to go in.

And there was a checkpoint where you could get

sifting material and booties

and coveralls to protect.

And then just driving up through and seeing

the utter devastation

of... I don't know

of what had once been a beautiful place,

was now... it looked like a kind of what you see

on the movies, like the war zone where

everything was just demolished.

And it was eerie

because it was so quiet because there's no animals.

And then driving

passed people standing on their ashes and just looking at nothing

and people hoping that they'll find at least one trinket or something tiny

in this pile of ash.

- Everybody knows

18,000, almost 19,000 structures destroyed, 86 people

deceased from the fire... horrific event, right?

But until you are boots on the ground and literally standing there

and looking at the devastation, you really have no clue.

You just don't.

- As Brynn and Jeremy drove back into Paradise for the first time

since they had escaped through a storm of orange embers, they passed property

after property of solo charred chimneys, standing guard over blackened rubble.

- So we went up

and we were looking at our property.

And then we noticed that our neighbors and our little cul de sac were showing

up, too.

So we were able to get a really sweet picture of everybody in that cul de sac.

And, I don't know, just kind of that sadness

and looking at everything that we had lost.

But in some ways, the joy of knowing

that all these people had made it out alive.

Brynn’s family lost their home, their business,

their school and their church to the fire.

- And to see the destruction of the...

of the shops up there.

This house right here was a rental by my parents.

So we had my parents’ home,

her sister's home, Margo.

And then

Blaine’s home, my brother, and then

my grandma's house house is up here.

Here's our home.

There's nothing quite...

There's nothing quite like this.

- Like so many around them for miles,

what used to be a home surrounded by trees is now leveled,

white ashes with the occasional twisted metal rod reshaped and blackened by heat.

- So this is just

piles and piles of

ashy clay.

We found a few things.

It's interesting to see how the cement

has been damaged in a few spots.

A tree house that is doing quite well.

- Interestingly enough, while the house is completely gone, the wooden

swing set and playhouse in the backyard still stands, hardly blackened at all.

Even the plastic slide is still intact, as if to wonder where all the kids are.

- Here’s our garden.

Look how beautiful some of our plants look.

It's amazing how I don't want to leave.

Here's our shower.

Colander,

my dishes,

my grandma's

pots and pans.

Oh, look at that!

Little vase right there.

- When I asked Brynn how she avoided falling into despair

after losing so much, she told me,

- I think a lot of people did.

I guess there were days of despair.

And I guess there's still moments of despair,

but it's not like it used to be.

I think maybe, maybe my understanding

that this is just

what life is, and life isn't

meant to be perfect, and it's not meant to be beautiful all the time.

It's actually meant to be hard.

And we grow through hard things.

Hard things aren't bad.

They just difficult.

I think having a knowledge of kind of

why we're here on Earth and that there's just there's more

to life than things.

And that I had my family and

I don't know. But it is kind of interesting to...

like, you never say to somebody, “Oh, well at least you made it out alive.”

Because there are a lot of people that were like, “Well,

I would rather be dead than lose everything I know.”

And I think that... I think people don't

really understand that.

Which

losing a house in a fire is devastating

and losing an entire community

and losing everybody that you know is...

Yeah, it's so hard to explain.

It's almost like everybody died at the same time.

You didn't get to say goodbye.

You didn't get to have farewells.

It was just, everything was gone.

But I think you just

keep moving on.

- And I think, honestly, going into my conversation with Brynn,

I was naive to that point.

I thought, I mean, yeah, dang, that

totally sucks that you lost your home, you lost your community,

and I mean, you really went through something scary and awful,

but you're alive, so success, right?

Sounds so callous the way I say it.

Oh my gosh, I can't believe I was even thinking that way.

But Brynn helped me to see that

I mean, yeah, of course, being alive is a wonderful gift.

And at the same time, there was still so much to mourn.

You know? So many relationships just cut off without warning.

All comfortable norms just ripped out from under

so many people in the blink of an eye.

Which makes it, I think, all the more important that naive

people like me gain a better understanding of what these people really went through

so that I can be supportive in the ways that they really need support.

- My kids and my family has been amazing. I think the relationships

that we develop in this life are so important.

But I also think that compassion, that you...

I mean, the growth and compassion that anybody has through a hard time,

like through a hard pregnancy or through a death of a grandparent

or through a divorce or through I mean, I think

these things make us definitely more compassionate. Or I would

hope I could have more compassion because of these experiences.

- If only we all had more compassion.

We've heard it said to mourn with those who mourn.

Comfort those who stand in need of comfort. These days,

there are so many people all around us who need someone to do just that.

People who seem like

they have everything going well for them, like they live in their own paradise,

when really maybe only the chimney is standing.

And it's up to us to find these people and lift them up

because one day, if not already, we ourselves will need lifting.

- I also think that the compassion and love that I saw

from people, especially in a world where the news keeps telling us how wicked

and how bad everyone is, and how much selfishness and how much crime and

loss of humanity there is

that we could see the humanity and we can see the goodness in people.

And that was, I think, really eye opening

because I think we have a population of good with a few bad,

and I think we focus on the few bad instead of noticing that silent majority

that is really good people that want to love and serve on others.

- The Camp Fire burned through

Paradise on November 8th, 2018.

Had it not happened, Brynn and her family would have performed

their Christmas variety show for more

than a thousand members of their community, just a month later.

But rather than just give it up to memory, the program was already set.

Rehearsals had already been underway.

Costumes, sets and props were all ash,

but the performers were very much alive.

So, they decided to give it one last go. On December 22nd,

a few days before Christmas, in 2018,

in a performing arts center in Chico, Brynn's family

put on their annual Christmas show one last time.

It wasn't smooth sailing.

The venue was different. The lighting was different.

The crew was different. The accompanist was new.

The costumes and the set were new.

Only Brynn's binder of program music had survived the fire.

What was normally two shows packed with nearly 700 people each,

had now shrunk to an audience of half that size.

But they did it.

It was their last hurrah. A punctuation mark

to a 25-year tradition in a community they cherished.

Many who saw their homes destroyed in the Camp

Fire are still struggling financially, emotionally, physically.

But they're also starting to rebuild, not just the structures that were lost,

but their very ways of living.

Many residents have chosen move on to other cities and communities,

while others can't imagine living anywhere other than Paradise.

The rebuilding effort is slow, but it is progressing.

After running more than 300,000 tests and 5,000 samples over three years,

for instance, the town's water is finally safe enough to drink again.

Homes and businesses are being rebuilt with fire safety top of mind,

keeping trees and flammable materials away from all buildings.

Schools and churches are being reconstructed and welcoming the community again.

Which proves to me that while the Camp Fire

was this devastating event accompanied by

great sorrow, loss, shock, tragedy,

all those things that we never truly wish to encounter in this life,

those who survived it have shown the rest of the world

just how resilient people can be.

They are examples of significant human strength, even if they didn't ask to be.

And it's more than that.

It's my belief that people who go through tragedies

like this one, maybe, maybe they're taking a personal hit

so that the rest of us can learn to step up.

By witnessing such hardship and resiliency,

I mean, those of us on the outside

are not only reminded of what is most important in life,

but it motivates so many people to actually do something about it.

To maybe throw politics and differences aside in exchange

for diving in and helping someone. Reaching out, providing

resources, typing a credit card number into a GoFundMe page,

opening our very homes up to our neighbors, serving food, fighting

flames, even rescuing ashes from literal ashes.

Suddenly we are reminded of the desire

to extend our open arms and our hearts to those who need it.

And along the way, I believe that we become better people for it.

- There's still hope.

You know,

we get all tied up in negative stuff all the time.

I think that if people could go today, with as divided

as our country is right now, if people could go back and take a look

back at that and stop sweating the stupid stuff

and focus on each other and people and not the negative rhetoric

and everything else, I think we'd be in a lot better place.

And it's unfortunate that it takes a tragedy like that for that to happen.

- So, I mean, while it may not be ideal, maybe someone has to fall on the sword

for the rest of us to wake up out of our

daily comfortable routine, to remember to reach out and help someone.

And if that's the case, then maybe we owe a debt of gratitude

to those who go through hardship in front of our eyes.

Because admittedly, I could probably use the wakeup call.

And beyond providing an opportunity for us to serve and become better people,

those who press forward through these tragedies show us proof

that when bad happens, as it inevitably does to all of us,

human beings have this incredible ability to pull through

until greater goodness emerges from the wreckage.

And that's pretty amazing.

- I would definitely say... definitely say

that am better and different because of it.

I don't actually know how to say I would not wish this on anybody.

And I would not want to do it again.

But I love where it's put us.

And I love

I love the life that we have now.

And this is not a life that we would have had.

- A very special thanks to Brynn and Daron for sharing their incredible experiences

with us, and for all of you for joining us on this journey.

In case you're wondering, I am going to continue to produce these episodes.

They just take a really long time

to do them right.

I mean, that's not a complaint.

Just an explanation as to why there's a big gap between.

I mean, I don't do a credit role, for instance, at the end, because aside

from the cover art that my kindhearted husband put together for me,

the credits would just all be my name and it'd be really lame.

Like, I mean, from finding the stories, the interviewing, the research,

the writing, the sound design, most of the graphics, the social posts,

blah, blah, blah.

I mean, it's it's just little ole’ me doing everything

basically on weekends and nights after the kids are asleep.

And I don't know, maybe you can think of each episode as a movie for your ears.

And movies take a long time to make, although we are a very low budget movie,

so maybe that's a bad comparison. I don't know.

But whatever. Honestly, I love doing it all.

It is such a personally rewarding process.

I love meeting these amazing people.

I love it even if it takes a million years.

So thank you. Thank you.

Thank you for your support, for hanging on with us.

When I say it means a lot to “us,” the “us” is really just

me and my cheerleader husband.

So, we really appreciate you.

And there are a lot of ways that you can show support, including just listening.

You could also join our Patreon, you could leave us a review,

Those reviews mean a lot to us.

Or most of all, you could share an episode with a friend who might benefit.

We can be found on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and podsitivitypodcast.com,

where you can actually see photos and videos to go along with each story.

And we do have some exciting updates coming for you down the pike.

So stay tuned for those.

I mean, this world is a crazy place

filled with hard things, but there really is so much good in it.

Even the Phoenix rises out of the ashes.

Thanks again for listening.

And always remember, you're worth more than you know.