FILMMAKERS ANALYZE PARADISE FIRE: Blame Residents for Town's Fire-Prone Location (San Diego: real estate, homes)

[mgforshort]

Butte County and the others in N. California could be dealing with a dozen new fires during the same week. Usually they are restricted to 2-4 or 20 acres in size and the firefighters shut them down the same day or in a few days. They are always working on it. It is the routine, I water the lawn, they are fighting fires. What happened in November 2018 was that they went out to catch another mad coyote when in reality it was a herd of elephants on meth - metaphorically speaking.

I'm convinced if the State had a dozen or more helicopters ready to take off on a 2-minute notice Paradise would have been saved, but who am I to offer expert advice, right ? The fire started near the Feather river, so water would be available literally a few hundred yards from the ignition point.

There is an app called "Watchduty", a free install on a smartphone or any computer. When it comes to reporting fires it is better and faster than any other government-supported notification system. In the fire season I click on it several times a day.

[evening sun]

I agree, the state needs much more air support for fighting wildfires, the planes dropping retardants are a fantastic tool.


We got no warnings, just some neighbors started yelling Fire. I tuned on the tv & saw that evacuation orders were mandated, one block east of us, so we grabbed our go bags & cats & got out, one block away evacuation order was close enough. We got stopped down the block, a neighbor asked us to take his Mother & daughter with is, so we did. It took us about 4 hours to get 20 miles to the shelter to drop off neighbors & then we looked for a motel to stay in with cats. It was pure madness.

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by mgforshort

Butte County and the others in N. California could be dealing with a dozen new fires during the same week. Usually they are restricted to 2-4 or 20 acres in size and the firefighters shut them down the same day or in a few days. They are always working on it. It is the routine, I water the lawn, they are fighting fires. What happened in November 2018 was that they went out to catch another mad coyote when in reality it was a herd of elephants on meth - metaphorically speaking.

I'm convinced if the State had a dozen or more helicopters ready to take off on a 2-minute notice Paradise would have been saved, but who am I to offer expert advice, right ? The fire started near the Feather river, so water would be available literally a few hundred yards from the ignition point.

There is an app called "Watchduty", a free install on a smartphone or any computer. When it comes to reporting fires it is better and faster than any other government-supported notification system. In the fire season I click on it several times a day.

But you said it was the police you contacted, not the fire dept. And the police responded, that they were "working on it". Well, presumably the firefighters were "working on it", but they're not the police. Shouldn't the police have been trying to get the word out to evacuate? What were the police, in fact, doing?


That app sounds like an essential piece of equipment for everyone living outside the major urban areas. And unfortunately, even people in some of the urban areas could end up needing it.

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by evening sun

I agree, the state needs much more air support for fighting wildfires, the planes dropping retardants are a fantastic tool.

We got no warnings, just some neighbors started yelling Fire. I tuned on the tv & saw that evacuation orders were mandated, one block east of us, so we grabbed our go bags & cats & got out, one block away evacuation order was close enough. We got stopped down the block, a neighbor asked us to take his Mother & daughter with is, so we did. It took us about 4 hours to get 20 miles to the shelter to drop off neighbors & then we looked for a motel to stay in with cats. It was pure madness.

Did that neighbor survive the fire? Bless you for taking his loved ones! You drove by at the right time.

I read in an article after the fire--I think it was in the New Yorker, but I haven't been able to pull it up just now--that one resident's car was inoperable, so he was stuck at his home. He also had quite a menagerie of pets, some that couldn't be herded into a car (snakes, large birds, etc.), so even if his car had been operable, he wouldn't have abandoned his animals.

So he spent his time hosing down his home, and survived. "They" all survived, though after the fire there was nowhere to buy food. Survivors were stuck, even if they still had their homes. And he didn't have a functional vehicle anyway.

[evening sun]

Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth

Did that neighbor survive the fire? Bless you for taking his loved ones! You drove by at the right time.

I read in an article after the fire--I think it was in the New Yorker, but I haven't been able to pull it up just now--that one resident's car was inoperable, so he was stuck at his home. He also had quite a menagerie of pets, some that couldn't be herded into a car (snakes, large birds, etc.), so even if his car had been operable, he wouldn't have abandoned his animals.

So he spent his time hosing down his home, and survived. "They" all survived, though after the fire there was nowhere to buy food. Survivors were stuck, even if they still had their homes. And he didn't have a functional vehicle anyway.

Yes I called his daughter the next day to make sure he was OK. Another neighbor died, he was further down the block.
Some places would have been too dangerous to hose down. The fire was ferocious. In blocks that were entirely destroyed, I don't think a hose down would have helped, because the smoke & the heat would get to you. The smoke was crazy. At noon, it looked like midnight, due to all the black smoke. But if he was a bit further out, he had a chance.

[Radaghast]

Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth

An article in the NY Times this weekend, billed as an opinion piece, gave an analysis of the Paradise fire by two award-winning filmmakers, who collaborated on a film expected to be released in theaters in the coming months.

I found the conclusions they reached to be disturbing in their victim-blaming: they portrayed the creation of the town as a helter-skelter process by "hippie gun nuts and backwoodsmen, growers of pot and fruit, trailer park dwellers and middle-class families and retirees from the city...", who created a town that "was saddled with the sorry title of the largest community west of the Mississippi without a municipal sewer system. Politicians and citizens alike paid little mind to sound planning or zoning laws or to safe spaces between houses and all that was kindling."

Furthermore: The filmmakers also blame the state of California for allowing the community to rebuild. There's no mention of PG&E in the entire piece.

Our C-D member-Paradise fire survivor, mgforshort, had this to say, when I messaged him about the article:
I hope we can get a more balanced view of the cause of the fire and of the community in general. I can't imagine, that after surviving that nightmare of a fire, the residents having to endure this negative publicity about them personally, being released nationwide and beyond.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/04/o...ebuilding.html

Yeah because filmmakers are totally qualified to analyze the environmental factors of a location as they pertain to fire conditions. (I'm a filmmaker, and possess no degrees or certifications that would qualify me to analyze the terrain, vegetation, or climate data involved in determining an area's proneness to wildfires).

Furthermore, if they're going to say that about Paradise then they have to save that about hundreds of other mountain communities from the Klamath Mountains in Trinity County all the way down to Cuyamaca's down near San Diego.

But they won't do that because this isn't about fire danger, this is about them dunking on a group they perceive to be on the opposite end of the political spectrum from them. This is about lobbing smack from the cheap seats and racking up a few easy clicks to score points in their professional circles.

How embarrassing for them.

[Arktikos]

Clearly the power company's negligence caused the fire. They've admitted that much themselves.

If the fire had started from a different source, would the results have been the same? Most likely, given the dry conditions and the speed at which the fire spread. It was incredibly fast.

So, the questions apparently raised by these filmmakers is whether more thoughtful planning and zoning could have prevented such widespread destruction and loss of life. I have my doubts!

[chiluvr1228]

Originally Posted by mgforshort

Butte County

There is an app called "Watchduty", a free install on a smartphone or any computer. When it comes to reporting fires it is better and faster than any other government-supported notification system. In the fire season I click on it several times a day.

Even though I don't need that app where I am now, I'm moving to Colorado Springs in the next few months so I downloaded it for future use. Thank you very much.

[recycled]

In contrast to the stereotypes in the NY times article cited above, I read this well-written article on the NPR news website about the long, tough recovery of Paradise in the 5 years since the 2018 fire. It features interviews with a variety of residents and local officials along with a good description of many challenges in the re-building effort.

https://www.npr.org/2023/11/08/12094...g-five-years-o

[wac_432]

Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth

An article in the NY Times this weekend, billed as an opinion piece, gave an analysis of the Paradise fire by two award-winning filmmakers, who collaborated on a film expected to be released in theaters in the coming months.

I found the conclusions they reached to be disturbing in their victim-blaming: they portrayed the creation of the town as a helter-skelter process by "hippie gun nuts and backwoodsmen, growers of pot and fruit, trailer park dwellers and middle-class families and retirees from the city...", who created a town that "was saddled with the sorry title of the largest community west of the Mississippi without a municipal sewer system. Politicians and citizens alike paid little mind to sound planning or zoning laws or to safe spaces between houses and all that was kindling."

Furthermore: The filmmakers also blame the state of California for allowing the community to rebuild. There's no mention of PG&E in the entire piece.

Our C-D member-Paradise fire survivor, mgforshort, had this to say, when I messaged him about the article:
I hope we can get a more balanced view of the cause of the fire and of the community in general. I can't imagine, that after surviving that nightmare of a fire, the residents having to endure this negative publicity about them personally, being released nationwide and beyond.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/04/o...ebuilding.html

The truth hurts. Paradise was a deathtrap. Probably still is. I can name plenty of other communities that are just waiting to burn and kill a good number of their population. Big Bear comes to mind.

Heck, tons of homes around me burned in the Thomas Fire. No surprise; they were old, dry, the infrastructure isn't great in the scrubby hills, and the roads are impassible to large firefighting vehicles. People are still rebuilding in the same spots, though. They will all burn again, because eventually the owners will get lax, or sell their place to someone stupid who doesn't maintain the "fireproofing" of the house.

It's pretty simple; if you live in fire country and only have one road in or out, you are rolling the dice on your life. Don't expect big brother to come save you or rely on the government to tell you when to get out. This is America, and that's not how we do things.

I went through a fire season after moving to CA and realized that only the urban valley floors are truly safe from wildfires. If you want to live somewhere else, you need to be prepared to run and lose everything.

I remember going out for ice cream, sitting on a hill in a park at night in the SFV and watching the hillside mansions burning, and the firefighting planes making retardant drops for entertainment.

That's not quite as macabre as these filmmakers making money off the sensation of deaths in Paradise. They're jerks, but they're not wrong.