Book: Fire in Paradise: An American Tragedy
Basic Information : Synopsis : Characters : Expectations : Thoughts : Evaluation : New Words : Book References : Good Quotes : Table of Contents : References
Basic Information:
Author: Alastair Gee, Dani Anguiano
Edition: ePub on Libby from the San Francisco Public Library
Publisher: W. W. Norton Company
ISBN: 1324005149 (ISBN13: 9781324005148)
Start Date: August 21, 2020
Read Date: August 25, 2020
256 pages
Genre: History,
Language Warning: Low
Rated Overall: 3 out of 5
History: 3 out of 5
Synopsis:
On November 4, 2018, a PG&E transformer malfunctioned. This caused a fire to ignite. Dry windy conditions caused the fire to spread. And spread it did, destroying a city of 27,000 people, killing 85 people.
The book goes through the start of the fire and the massive explosion of growth it went through, consuming Paradise in just a couple of hours.The book talks about who survived and who did not. Also there are stories concerning fighting the fire and trying to escape it.
Then there is the recovery. The book continues on and tells the story of how some of the people recovered. Some moved away, others are rebuilding.
Cast of Characters:
John Sedwick-retired CalFire firefighter. Died in blaze, helping to save Paradise
Skye Sedwick-daughter
Iris Natividad-DMV consultant. Partner with Andrew Downer. Sold antiques
Andrew Downer-Partner with Natividad. Mechanic. Amputated foot, alcoholic
Jim Broshears-Paradise emergency coordinator
Susan Van Horn-60 year old retiree
Matt McKenzie-CalFire fire captain at Jarbo Gap
Rob Nichols-Paradise police officer
Joe Kennedy-bulldozer operator in Nevada City, sent to Paradise to assist.
Kory Honea-Butte sheriff. Became the voice of information from his daily briefings.
Recommendation: None
Date Became Aware of Book: June 2020
Thoughts:
Prologue
Introduces us to the family of John Sedwick on the morning of November 4, 2018. Then talks about conditions and background in California. The area around Paradise is not very much visited. Gold caused the area to be settled. The largest pure gold nuggets, weighing 54 pounds, was found at Magalia, an outlier to Paradise. The Native Americans of the area were forced to leave=called the Konkow Trail of Tears. Later on, the area became a stronghold for the John Birch Society. When the fire broke out, 25% of the population was elderly also about 25% was disabled.
The authors note that plants have evolved to cope with conditions of deprivation-such as water.
Part 1 Paradise
1 A Gold Rush Town 7
The author goes through the history of California, along with the area surrounding the town of Paradise.
2 Off the Grid 26
Paradise
was one of the few small towns in California with an evacuation plan.
Question of when, not if there would be a fire. But the thinking was
that they would only need to evacuate part of the town at a time.
PG&E transmission tower 27/222 was almost 100 years old. It and the whole transmission line was known to have problems. A hook on the town came loose and shorted the line, causing sparks to fall.
Gives background of PG&E
High winds were going that night.
3 Firebrands 45
The inferno starts. Power outage at 6:15am. Spotted at 6:28. But Quickly grew. Even small, the fire people had grave concerns about how far and how fast this would be. AUthors give a description of the area where the fire started. Sounds very remote with not good access. Why no plane drops? Dark and high winds. Describes several of the early efforts to get out of the way of the fire. Fire reaches Paradise.
Description of a man coming out of the smoke: one of them slightly on fire. To me, any fire on me is more than slightly on fire.
Part 2 Hell
4 Daybreak 65
Fire enters Paradise, causing all resources to be used and an evacuation started. Paradise had an emergency plan to move citizens out of the way. But did not expect to move the whole town. Less than half of the citizens had opted in to an emergency alert system. Both a nursing home and a hospital needed to be evacuated and moved. Took special units to do this.
Result of all of these people leaving at once was a traffic jam of people going down the hill.
Bulldozer operator was proud that he ran towards fire, not away. My observation, tis is a common attribute of firefighters.
Talks about a distributed command structure in this chaos, called Leader’s intent. When you cannot get through to know what is being commanded, you can try to understand what a leader would command you to do and do it. This was very similar to what Jim Mattis Described in Call Sign Chaos (ch 4).
5 Stay or Go 90
Some basic responses kick in-run or hide; stay or go. Tales of terror, panic, and heroism. Then escape became impossible. SO the question was how to shelter in place. In one place, firefighters circled their trucks to protect the people and tried to hose down as much as they could-but the water pressure had gotten very low. ANother broken into a store to crowd 100 people into.
6 The Cemetery 109
John Sewick was in his element. He meets up with his old captain and they form a plan. More stories of seeking refuge, rescue and evacuation. It was noted that usually the fires do not jump the river. This time it had. John Sedwick died with his home. By 4am, Nov 9th, the destruction of Paradise was almost complete.
7 The Day After 128
November 9, 2018-the day after the fire has ripped through Paradise. Stories of individuals trying to find their loved ones and friends. Also wondering about what they have lost. Paradise was off-limits, but some people found their ways in.
One guy tries to run a roadblock only to be picked up at a second roadblock. He was trying to reach his wife.
Part 3 Ashes and Seeds
8 A City Dispersed 141
Effects of the destruction of the Camp Fire was felt far and wide.
Smoke waves: defined by a period when dangerous particulate matter from a blaze has smothered an area for two or more days
One person close by as she was breathing the smoke noted that she was breathing the people who burnt in paradise.
A Lot of the time, people were just waiting. Waiting for information, waiting for something to happen.
The dead and missing count kept rising to the missing was over 1,000 people.
One thing which Paradise showed was the risk which was in the woods and building in that way.
9 Search and Recovery 158
The devastation was like noting else the SAR’s had seem before including 9/11 and the Discovery disaster. I am wondering if it is something similar to what they will find in Oregon with whole towns gone.
Almost impossible to search the whole town. Concentrated on missing people or where the cars were.
About 10% of homes in California have cremated remains in their homes.
There were those who stayed in Paradise, but were virtually a prisoner there. People could leave, but not come in. It was a quarantine area to keep looters out as well as those who wanted to gawk. One trapped person took to be an animal rescue and came to have a collection of pets waiting for the owners to collect them. It was therapeutic for him.
Trump came to the area. He attributed the fire to poor forest management. But it was due to the brush which had collected.
Two weeks later was Thanksgiving. This begged the question, what is there is be thankful for.
10 A Pile of Ashes 180
People were returning. Hard to recover, very disorienting. Businesses started to reopen. Still was hazardous waste everywhere. Hard to find a place to live on an ongoing basis. Some of them moved into other fire prone areas and have been burnt out again. Students had to complete their coursework online.
Interesting, as much as I think Franklin Graham is backing a horse named Trump who is very defective, his organization, Samaritan’s Purse, was there helping people recover.
Discussion on the place of climate change and what to do about it.
11 The Perfect Fire 202
Most destructive disaster, at least financially in 2018. PG&E was blamed for the fire because of por maintenance. Lawyers got into the act. What people wanted most, beyond the money, was that PG&E took responsibility for the fire and corrected why did it happen in the first place.
Rebuilding was not a second thought for a lot of people. But some had had enough and moved away. The question was, should Paradise rebuild and what should it look like? Should it try to look the same? Less population? … Also the evacuation plan needed to think about a massive disaster, not a local one.
We as a nation don’t value maintenance, we don’t value infrastructure, we don’t value getting ahead of it. We don’t value anything until there’s a series problem. Mike Zuccolillo, Paradise city councilmember.
After the fire, the next Spring, new wildlife sprouted up.
Epilogue 227
Interesting that the book brings out that these wildfires could in the next several years reach the core of our large Western cities. Just this weekend, Portland was put on an evacuation warning.
There was a misstatement about PG&E starting another large fire in Sonoma COunty in 2019. It was started by a small farmer type. But I think PG&E was found to have some responsibility.
Evaluation:
In a lot of ways, this book reads like an extended newspaper article. It is well researched, full of stories of people who experienced the fire, along with those people whose job it is to plan and fight disasters. The authors start at the beginning when transmission equipment failed causing embers to fall on dry vegetation. From there they trace how the fire erupts, chasing people out of their homes.
The book maintains the excitement and terror of the event. But that is the best it has to offer. Like a good newspaper article, they bring the experts to talk about what went wrong. And that I think is the problem with this book, it acts more like a long newspaper article. Maybe a many part series. There is more surface stories without getting to the depth. No mention about why there was only one major way out of town. No examination of what the authors felt would be an optimal size for the town. So read the book. I hesitate to say enjoy, but learn and ponder.
New Words:
- Friable (4): easily crumbled.
Whole Earth Catalog
Tales of Paradise Ridge by Skye Sedwick
First Line: At 8:30am on November 8, 2018, John Sedwick pounded on his daughter’s bedroom door.
Last Line: And on and around the ruined Paradise Ridge, people watched the fires with a familiar sense of dread.
- We as a nation don’t value maintenance, we don’t value infrastructure, we don’t value getting ahead of it. We don’t value anything until there’s a series problem. Mike Zuccolillo, Paradise city councilmember.
Prologue 1
Part 1 Paradise
1 A Gold Rush Town 7
2 Off the Grid 26
3 Firebrands 45
Part 2 Hell
4 Daybreak 65
5 Stay or Go 90
6 The Cemetery 109
7 The Day After 128
Part 3 Ashes and Seeds
8 A City Dispersed 141
9 Search and Recovery 158
10 A Pile of Ashes 180
11 The Perfect Fire 202
Epilogue 227
Acknowledgments 231
Notes on Sources 237
References:
Publisher's Web Site for Book
Wikipedia-Camp Fire
Amazon-Book
Amazon-Author
GoodReads-Book
GoodReads-Author
New York Times Review
Washington Post Review
Wall Street Journal Review
Bookmarks- a list of reviews
WAMC public radio interview with the authors
Tulsa Public Radio interview with the authors
Guardian excerpt of book - authors work for the Guardian
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