PARADISE — It was a scene all too familiar to anyone in Butte County.
“Watching those towns burn on TV and listening to, ‘No rain in a long time; 85 mph winds; can’t get air support up … traveling three football fields a minute, … (It’s) exactly what we went through,” said Steve Crowder, the mayor of Paradise.
The Camp Fire, which started because of a downed PG&E power line on Nov. 8, 2018, burned more than 153,000 acres, destroyed 13,500 homes and killed 85 people, effectively leveling Paradise and some surrounding communities. Crowder, who had been elected to the town council just two days before the fire, had his home destroyed. And Wednesday, he learned his daughter’s Altadena home had been destroyed by the Eaton Fire, one of several fires causing widespread destruction in Los Angeles County.
Just as the Camp Fire displaced around 50,000 people in Butte County, the Palisades, Eaton, Kenneth, Hurst, Lidia and Sunset fires have left thousands of people without a home in Southern California. Beyond headlines, fire-devastated communities in the north state share an acute understanding for fire victims in the south — and its elected officials have offered many words of hard-earned wisdom to their fellow citizens on what lies ahead.
“We still got a pretty town. It’s not like it was; it will never be like it was. That was the first thing I heard from (my daughter) was, ‘I don’t think we can go back there cause it’s never going to look the same,’” Crowder said.
“And she’s right. It’s never going to look the same, but it can still be home.”
Paradise is six years into rebuilding its town — it was actually the fastest growing town in the state in 2023, with a population increase of more than 16%. During this rebuild, leaders have improved evacuation procedures and set prospects for building fire-wise communities.
But there’s no quick or easy road.
“It’s hard to tell people to have patience,” Crowder said.
Initial response
Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea has led numerous evacuations in Butte County in a series of crisis that dates back to even before the Camp Fire. If there’s one thing he’s learned, it’s that there are no shortcuts to recovery.
“Where I sit today, having been through the Camp Fire, North Complex fire, the Park Fire — is I understand that they’re at the very beginning of a very long, and very difficult process that’s going to last months, if not years,” Honea said. “I know this is a hard thing to do, but this is not going to be a fast process. And sometimes patience is going to be required to navigate through the challenges.”
Honea, who has sent sergeant Dave Ennes south to assist Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna along with a search and rescue team, was struck by the similarities to the Camp Fire.
“The same kind of destruction that we saw in Paradise, where, house after house, neighborhood after neighborhood was destroyed,” he said. As other fires followed, he said his office learned and refined their process, and now sends evacuation warnings far in advance: “We recognize how rapid fires go.”
Pressure brought by evacuees — and even non-evacuated people — caused problems for BCSO in maintaining safety for residents, also similar to sights in Los Angeles, according to Honea.
He said there is an understanding of people seeking to return home to salvage belongings or take pictures for insurance, but a balance must be struck in maintaining safety and allowing people back home.
“During the initial response, do pay attention to what public safety officials say in regards to warnings, evacuations — and recognize that there is still a lot of risk and danger that they’re trying to mitigate at this point, Honea said.
He added that people looking for information during a disaster often end up spreading misinformation, which Honea said “drains resources” in trying to verify that information.
The race to rebuild
Crowder, too, emphasizes that there is a long road ahead — but making some key decisions early in the process is key. He said the top priority for people must be to secure long-term housing as quickly as possible.
He said after the Camp Fire displaced 50,000 people in the Paradise-Magalia area, every apartment in Butte County was quickly filled. He thinks the same may happen in Southern California.
“Better find long-term housing, like right now, because it’s going to be gone, and if you’re looking to buy a house, prices are going to jump,” Crowder said. “If you don’t do that now, you’re going to have a heck of a time finding it because you’re going to compete with I-don’t-know-how-many people.”
Whether returning to a home intact or a home destroyed, community members must make decisions on how to proceed after a disaster. Crowder said some people decide to leave forever, even if their home was saved, while others make a determination to return or rebuild.
As Paradise began to rebuild, the population consisted of about 80% locals and 20% from out of town, he said. But six years later, the split looks 50-50, he said, in part due to lower cost housing and local schools attracting young families. The population is currently around 11,000, a fair step toward its pre-Camp Fire total of 26,000.
In his eyes, though, this doesn’t yet add up to a “rebuild.”
“Newspapers and TV places … everybody wants to ask about Paradise and I get it,” Crowder said. “They ask, ‘Well, how do you feel now that Paradise is rebuilt?’
“And I’m like, ‘What do you mean? We’re not even close to being rebuilt. This is a 20-year rebuild, and that’s going to be a shock for people when it comes to that reality.”
The government’s role
While homeowners and renters grappled with everything from insurance claims to debris removal in Butte County, elected officials used their power to connect people with necessary resources, along with writing legislation.
Assemblyman James Gallagher (R-Yuba City), the state’s Republican minority leader, said he advocated for resources including debris removal programs (more than 3.6 million tons of debris and contaminated soil were removed from the Camp Fire footprint in the nine months following the fire) along with funding to rebuild destroyed irrigation systems.
He said long-term recovery efforts should focus on securing insurance claims and working with government agencies and nonprofits. One local group, the North Valley Community Foundation, dispersed $62.6 million in fire-related grants in Butte County, money that included an initial $1 million donation from a foundation headed by NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers, a native of Chico.
Gallagher also encouraged citizens to keep an eye on the mental health of themselves and loved ones.
“Look out for family members. There was a lot of people under the severe stress of that experience that led to health problems later,” Gallagher said. “This is an extremely hard thing to go through.”
Like Gallagher, Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Richvale) said insurance claims — and PG&E’s Fire Victim Trust — garnered a lot of his office’s attention.
Taxes on settlement claims by fire victims posed an issue for Fire Victim Trust claimants, according to LaMalfa. He led the passing of the Disaster Resiliency and Coverage Act of 2024, which exempted taxes for settlement claims by fire victims and would do the same for people in southern California fires, if applicable. President Biden signed the bill into law last month.
Both LaMalfa and Gallagher said the best thing that can be done going forward is to prevent these fires before they happen. Using some of the same words he used on the floor of Congress this week, LaMalfa said the fires in southern California emphasize a need for aggressive land management.
“We know every year that the Santa Ana winds are going to blow and there’s going to be a lot of risk,” LaMalfa said. “We can’t always control what we can do with their buildings or homes, but forest management and land management of the federal lands — that’s something we have direct jurisdiction over. We keep losing, and that gets back to insurability.”
The road ahead
When Crowder lost his home in the Camp Fire, he and his wife made a decision to stay, and he witnessed his town wrestle with devastation.
“Every part of the town looked the same. It was gone. It looked like a nuclear bomb had gone off. And driving around, I’m looking, I’m going, ‘Oh man, how is this ever gonna come back?’”
But it did, he said, with each visit he made from Chico up to Paradise; each conversation he had with a neighbor; and every phone call to him asking, “what can we do to help you,” even from people who lost their home.
“That’s who Paradise was, and that’s what I believe has really driven the rebuild — people came back because of the community,” Crowder said. “That fire took 95% of our town, and it took zero of our community spirit.”