PARADISE — Upon hearing the news of yet another devastating wildfire, this time north of Los Angeles, Paradise Mayor Steve Crowder knew he would be making phone calls.
This wasn’t the first time dealing with wildfires for Crowder. He sat on the Paradise Town Council during the Camp fire — the November 2018 megafire that killed 85 people and took his home along with more than 18,000 other structures — and it certainly wasn’t the first time he’s made calls similar to this one.
The first was to Victoria Knapp, Chairwoman of the Altadena Town Council in an area that made up the largest portion of the Eaton fire’s footprint. Knapp had evacuated her home and brought her family to Pomona, where Crowder reached her.
“My phone rang at 8:30 in the morning and I didn’t recognize the number, but I knew that because we were suffering from a fire I should answer it and I did and it was him,” Knapp said. “And from that, a sort of friendship was born and his wise counsel sort of came out of that.”
In the almost seven years since the Camp Fire, Crowder has found himself in a mentoring position as more and more large fires have erupted — whether it be next door such as the Park and Thompson Fires or across the Pacific Ocean as far as Maui. Crowder invited Knapp as well as Altadena Town Council Vice Chairman Nic Arnzen to come tour Paradise.
“The main reason I wanted to do that is people feel so alone and I just wanted to let Victoria know that you’re not alone,” Crowder said while seated at a table with both Arnzen and Knapp at the Paradise Community Park. “You have people here standing with you and we’re here to help you. I hate to see communities go through this.”
By 1 p.m. Sunday, Crowder had already taken Arnzen and Knapp to a few locations in the south half of Paradise. They stopped at Paradise Community Park to see walls featuring the handprints of community members along the town’s bike trail as well as the historical plaques that line it. Arnzen made a quick stop at the Paradise Depot Museum, prompting a dive into the town’s history by Crowder.
Both Knapp and Arnzen frequently discussed ideas for their own recovery and the people they serve.
Shared grief
Like Crowder, Arnzen and Knapp lost their homes to wildfire, albeit much more recently.
Both expressed familiar feelings of grief and a sense that reality still hadn’t fully set in. While some might find solace in cleaning up lots, Knapp described a new kind of pain.
“It’s a totally different kind of grief trigger when it’s gone,” Knapp said. “Because then it’s gone. So in that time, we’re two months and one week out from the fire, it was like what could we recover? And we did have someone come in and sift for us. You don’t recover much but you recover pieces that become triggers of memories.”
That same feeling has been noted by many who survived wildfires but lost homes and property. Knapp, Arnzen and Crowder have faced that while in leadership positions, meaning additional responsibilities expanding far beyond personal loss.
In his ongoing advice to the councilors, Crowder had warned that many residents, in their personal grieving and feelings of isolation, could turn on one another as tensions increase.
“What’s been valuable is that we tell that to people,” Arnzen said of his experience so far. “When we feel them insulating, we say well look, there’s going to be an issue that we’ve from so many leaders that our town’s going to turn on itself. And I’m purposely telling that to people that I see starting to turn and it works. They mostly agree and want to stop that from happening.”
“Let’s be part of the solution and not the problem,” Knapp added.
As Butte County has seen many times over — and what people impacted by the Eaton fire are now seeing as well — is the seemingly endless complications of recovery. Knapp said she’s been fielding these concerns and shared her input on how various residents choose to go forward after a tragedy.
“The process seems so daunting,” Knapp said. “And then you multiply it by 7,000 because everyone’s going to have to go through it. The magnitude and scale of it is so large and that’s really hard to wrap your mind around. So what is coming up for me as a leader and as a resident is the need to continue to center on Altadena in the conversation as it relates to the Eaton fire.”
Part of maintaining a headspace to maintain that care for the community, Crowder said, is staying grounded in the reality of the situation — while remembering that words matter.
“It’s funny to talk about and I do say ‘debris removal’ but when it was being done and somebody would say something like look at that truck full of debris,” Crowder said. “That’s not debris, that’s somebody’s life and memories.”
Signs of hope
When asked about the lessons so far in the Paradise tour, amid all of the recovery ideas amassed by both councilors, Knapp and Arnzen said they received a sense of hope.
“It’s green and it’s lush,” Knapp said of Paradise in 2025. “We lost a lot of trees. When the fire comes through it ravages everything in its wake. So being able to see the natural beauty, that’s the thing that strikes me the most.”
For Arnzen, hope was all he had left when the Eaton fire struck. Though admittedly shaky at times, Arnzen said he tried to keep that hope in spite of the wreckage.
“I would say this trip replenishes hope,” Arnzen said. “Because I think in the early days we were so devastated and what we saw was so overwhelming that I had to stand from a place of what was possible in what was seemingly impossible and that was to build back this full town. But we had to take it on at our own level.”
The three agreed that disasters such as wildfires also create a sense of unity among those who have to face them.
“Government reaction and government work toward recovery knows no political affiliation,” Arnzen said. “It is definitely an equalizer in a situation like this where you realize your neighbors who might have different views are in the same boat as you.”
Arnzen also said patience has to be at the forefront as those experiencing loss come to grips with their new reality.
“I’m in a situation where I have to remind myself that the way (other’s) behavior is right now does not define them,” Arnzen said.
Though a new world for Arnzen and Knapp, Crowder has made peace with his role in trying to help other communities freshly affected by wildfire through unity and friendship.
“If there can be one good thing that can come from our fire, I hope it can make it easier for them to get through it,” Crowder said. “That’s something good.”