Chris was busy working hard on their property, situated on a tall hill overlooking a ravine in Concow, California. Concow is an unincorporated community situated in the Sierra Nevada foothills in Butte County. The community is approximately a 25 mile drive from Paradise, California, where the Camp Fire burned for 17 days during November 2018. 

Kim and Chris grew up in the lakeside town of Port Washington, Wisconsin. But, after taking two trips to visit friends, they fell in love with the beauty of Northern California and the cost of living. They landed in Concow about four years ago, where they live with their three dogs and two goats. 

“It’s so dope,” Kim exclaimed. “Even burnt there’s no way I could move away.” 

She slid in to a black, stick-shift Subaru hatchback, and traversed down the steep landscape of Wind Ridge Drive to get burgers from the only local restaurant, Scooter’s Cafe, located on California State Route 70 and Deadwood Road. Ironically, thousands of blackened trees lined the way down Concow Road, the only way in and out of town. 

The Camp Fire was reported at 6:33 a.m. on November 8, 2018. That morning, Kim looked out a window and could see the blaze burning toward their home. Suddenly, the wind shifted. While Kim and Chris’ trailer and partially constructed tiny home were spared, their storage container went up in flames. Kim thought their belongings would be safe, but a wood floor in the storage container led to the destruction of their most prized possessions. She stays optimistic, as material things can be replaced but people cannot. 

Kim used to work at Kalico Kitchen of Paradise, which was taken off the map by the Camp Fire. According to the restaurant Facebook page, the small town diner was a favorite amongst locals, earning a 4.5 out of 5 stars. After the fire, a lot of her customers moved away. 

“It’s forever affected everybody,” Kim said. “I’ve lost a lot of friends. A lot. It’s sad.”

Through it all, some members of the community have stepped up to help and provide for others. Kim stood outside the Pines Yankee Hill Hardware Store, which has become a hub for Concow residents. She greeted a man named Mike in the parking lot, who climbed into a white Ford F150 adorned with a sticker saying, “Suck it Up.” 

Next to the main store sits a brand new building, a distribution center, which was swiftly built after the fire. A pair, Nicole Newman and David Desmond, work together to support the people of Concow by providing food, water, clothes, toys, and much more. They see about 50 to 60 people each day. It is a situation in which the agents for recovery are also in recovery themselves. Nicole and the rest of her family are now living down the road in a trailer behind Canyon Lanes Market. 

While many have noticed a sort of bonding through the obliteration of their community, many more have found the situation difficult to cope with. Seven people in Concow perished in the Camp Fire. Families have moved away, and couples have grown apart. 

“Chris and I go see a therapist and she said ‘you know when things like this happen it either brings you together or breaks you up’ and I know a lot of people that have split up. Like a lot. It affects your relationships with people,” Kim explained. 

The nation’s attention and most news coverage blatantly focused on the town of Paradise after the fire, rightfully so, as the name lends itself to enticing headlines. But the people of Concow feel that their struggle has been overlooked, ignored even. 

As Kim drove through the devastation, which is still being cleaned up, she pointed out dozens of white trailers sprinkled in the trees. Earlier this year, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) decided that all fire debris must be removed before residents can re-occupy their land, and if the ordinance is violated, the area could lose $1.7 billion in relief funding. Concow residents test the boundary, though, because no one is looking at them. 

“It’s hard to hear it called the Paradise Fire,” Kim said. “Because it started in my backyard.” 

The post Deadwood Road appeared first on Reclamation on the Ridge.

“Loss of life and even property in the great fire occurring the same night in Chicago did not match the death toll and destruction visited upon northeastern Wisconsin during the same dreadful hours. The town of Peshtigo was centered around a woodenware factory, the largest in the country. Every building in the community was lost. The tornado of fire claimed at least 800 lives in this area. Many of the victims lie here. The memory of 350 unidentified men, women and children is preserved in a nearby mass grave.”

As stated on the plaque, wood products manufacturing in the area was the largest in the world. Notoriously flammable sawdust blanketed the town. With very casual use of fire during the 19th century, fires were very common. Sometimes the smoke was so bad that they had to close school, and sometimes it was so dark that one couldn’t see a friend from a block away. 

In the fall of 1871, the citizens of Peshtigo had come to the end of a very long, dry summer. The driest in recent memory. On the evening of October 8, people had just finished fighting a fire downtown, where piles of sawdust had gone up in flames. Folks in the area were always worried about fires; they buried prized possessions to protect them in anticipation of a fire. Night came and the wind picked up. People reportedly heard the sound of a “freight train” and saw a red glow coming their way. The fire had already destroyed the west side of town.

“People ran into the river, bobbing up and down, because there was no way to fight it,” said Scott Knickelbine, author of The Great Peshtigo Fire: Stories and Science from America’s Deadliest Firestorm. “They couldn’t have their head out of the water for more than a minute before their heads started to burn.”

The few survivors of the Peshtigo Fire suffered from ailments like scorched lungs, pneumonia, among other things. It was a while before news was able to reach anyone, as the Great Chicago Fire happened on the same night. Ironically, the buildings that were burning in Chicago that night were made of wood from Peshtigo.

Initially, no one believed the stories. They simply refused to believe that “people burst into flames” and that there were “fire tornadoes” or that “metal burned in mid-air.” Later, fact finders found all claims to be true. The Peshtigo Fire has been mostly forgotten because almost no one survived, while the Chicago Fire is notorious because people lived to tell about it. 

“It requires an eye witness to do it and even then one never can give an accurate account of what happened on that terrible night of the eight of October 1871,” Rev. Kurt R. F. Geyer wrote in the Peshtigo Times on October 6, 1921. 

In Peshtigo, things changed so dramatically that the people who did not die decided to leave town. Business in the area collapsed, which led to a sharp decrease in economic vibrancy, to the point that it would have been irrelevant to rebuild the factories. It took a very long time for Peshtigo to come back.

“The occurrences of that dreadful night have never been accorded their proper place in the history of American disasters, primarily because Chicago’s ordeal was by its very nature more spectacular, more universally publicized, and more often revived in print,” according to Rev. Peter Pernin in a reproduced excerpt from the Wisconsin Magazine of History in 1971.  

The Peshtigo Fire Museum and memorial cemetery is located on the site of the Catholic church that Father Pernin lost in the fire. The building is the first church rebuilt in Peshtigo after the fire.

Things have changed tremendously since 1871. Most recently, the Camp Fire, which now holds the record for the most destructive wildfire in California history, burned through Butte County on November 8, 2018. More than 18,000 buildings were destroyed and 85 lives were lost. The fire took 17 days to contain and cost $16.5 billion.  

Paradise was a community of over 25,000 people, built in an area with lots of ravines and full of dead wood. Although there is a lot of active fire suppression, there is also lot of available fuel in the area, made worse by drought and heat, which makes things very flammable. Mix those conditions with 70 mph gusts of wind, and it doesn’t take much to spark and flame. And it doesn’t take much more to turn that flame into a firestorm. Firestorms are so hot that aluminum tire rims can melt like wax – the melting point of aluminum is 1,221 degrees Fahrenheit – a situation like that takes on a physics of its own.

In regards to rebuilding the town, Paradise Mayor Jody Jones says she thinks Paradise will initially be smaller, “although everything will be brand new, which will be attractive and could bring more people to the community.”

The post A Disaster of Historic Proportion appeared first on Reclamation on the Ridge.

It is not uncommon to see wildfires in the area, as there have been four notable fires since the turn of the decade: one in 2000, another in 2008, a third in 2012, and the Camp Fire in 2018. 

Concow, California is named after the Konkow Maidu American Indians. The breathtakingly beautiful area was home to several hundred people and hundreds of thousands of trees, but almost all of it was destroyed in the Camp Fire. Three buildings survived though, Yankee Hill Hardware Store, Canyon Lakes Market, and the only local restaurant, Scooter’s. 

People come from all over to eat at Scooter’s Cafe on California State Route 70 and Deadwood Road, especially motorcyclists, who either stop before their trek up Cal 70 or on their way out. The cafe hosts bike rallies and bike nights in the summer, with awards for the best bikes.

The sound of motorcycles preceded a group of men with beards, mustaches and tattoos who pulled into the gravel parking lot. They parked their bikes and walked into the restaurant. They dressed in jeans, hats, sunglasses, black biker boots, and black leather vests with appliqués that read, “Booze Fighters.”

Dan and Bonnie Salmon own the cafe. Bonnie was working behind the counter, dressed in jeans and a grey Scooter’s tank top. She calls out an order for Carrie and delivers the food to her table. The menu offers salads, burgers, sandwiches, ribs and tacos. The most notable item, “the Fatboy,” a $12 half-pound burger topped with cheese, bacon, mushroom, lettuce, tomato, onion and homemade sauce, served on a toasted roll. 

The patio was littered with bikers, construction workers, and local patrons, all enjoying afternoon lunch. An elderly couple, Marilyn and Bill, sat across from each other drinking soda. A black and white service dog with a neon orange harness laid beneath them.

“We’re just trying our best to help each other,” Marilyn said. “It’s sad to see the people you love going through so much.” 

The fire has forever changed the lives of thousands, traumatizing some in unimaginable ways. The Camp Fire drove residents into Concow Lake, where they rushed into the water to escape the flames. There was about 90 people standing on a little island in the lake before Brandon Hill, who owns a property near the water, got a canoe and began helping people out. 

The scene is reminiscent of the Peshtigo Fire in Wisconsin, greatest forest fire disaster in American history, when at least 800 people lost their lives in 1871. 

“People ran into the river, bobbing up and down, because there was no way to fight it,” said Scott Knickelbine, author of The Great Peshtigo Fire: Stories and Science from America’s Deadliest Firestorm. “They couldn’t have their head out of the water for more than a minute before their heads started to burn.”

The weather conditions were very similar in both fires; there was lot of available fuel in the area, made worse by drought and heat, which makes things very flammable. Mix those conditions with 70 mph gusts of wind, and it doesn’t take much to spark and flame. And it doesn’t take much more to turn that flame into a firestorm. Firestorms are so hot that aluminum tire rims can melt like wax – the melting point of aluminum is 1,221 degrees Fahrenheit – a situation like that takes on a physics of its own.

People who have never witnessed a wildfire, especially one of such magnitude, might not know that the right side of a plastic white picket fence could cement to the ground, while the left stands tall and untouched. They might not know that an entire house might burn to the ground, while the wooden gazebo and patio chairs in the backyard go unscathed. They might not know that half of a car could go up in flames, burned orange and brown, while the paint on the other side is still shining. This is the physics of a firestorm. And people tried to fight it. 

According to various accounts, a man from Concow kept driving back into the fire to save people until his truck melted. A garbage man ran into an elderly woman’s house to save her. People saw an old woman outside in her pajamas and slippers, watering her house in an attempt to save it. Another woman, dressed in a bath robe, stood on the street in Paradise, directing traffic during the evacuation. These are the faces of the fire. 

Through it all, some members of the community have stepped up to help and provide for others. The Pines Yankee Hill Hardware Store, one of the three buildings to survive, has become a hub for Concow residents. A small pug runs around the property greeting customers. It is a new pup, after the owner accidentally ran over his old dog during the evacuation. 

“We try to clean it every day, but you know, a lot of people miss,” said a bearded man behind the cash register when a woman asked to use the restroom.

Steps away from the main store sits a brand new building, a distribution center, which was swiftly built after the fire. A pair, Nicole Newman and David Desmond, work together to support the people of Concow by providing food, water, clothes, toys, and much more. The distribution center is open from 10 a.m to 2 p.m, and they see about 50 to 60 people each day. 

It is a situation in which the agents for recovery are also in recovery themselves, as Nicole and the rest of her family have been displaced. She used to live in the Big Bend trailer park. Now she lives behind Canyon Lakes Market with her four kids, one cousin, her brother and sister-in-law, and their three kids.

Running around alongside the pug is Nicole’s seven year-old nephew, Scott, dressed in a red t-shirt, blue shorts and DC shoes with dirt on his face and legs. 

Most people come in for the necessities like food, water and clothing, but even adults come in looking for miscellaneous items like Legos. Victims of the fire seeks a sense of normalcy. 

“It’s the littlest things that make people happy.” Nicole said. 

Unfortunately, the good is always accompanied by the bad. Some are attempting to take advantage of people who have already lost everything. At the distribution center, when pallets of diapers come in, visitors would take them for free and resell them to Wal-Mart for money. Now they must unbox the diapers, among other things, to prevent theft. 

While some decide to scavenge the remains of peoples’ lives, others attempt to provide. At the Yankee Hill Historical Society, two Russian men from Sacramento host a free barbecue lunch from noon to 2 p.m every Saturday. They see about 50 to 80 people every weekend. 

The small, white building was the Messilla Valley School, which operated from 1856 to 1966. After sitting vacant for years, the school was moved and restored by the Yankee Hill Historical Society. Inside the schoolhouse, the wooden floors creak as residents gather around food and friends. The white panel walls are adorned with chalkboards and old maps. The green shades are pushed up to allow light to flood into the space, packed with plastic white tables and chairs. 

On one of the tables sits a pen and an open notebook, which says, “Please write your needs here and we will try to help you!” A couple, Ryan and Tammy, inquired about a wheelbarrow. A woman named Meralee asked if anyone knew how to repair a log splitter. Another woman named Kimm was looking for a toy hauler, a Travel Trailer RV,  to live in. 

A couple, Clara and Rob Barber, who have been in the area since the 1990s, also came to lunch. They own 40 acres of land on Lake Concow. They lost their home in the fire, but have become one of the first people in the area to attain a building permit after clearing their land. They are months, if not years, ahead of everyone else. Rob works in construction, and with the help of a few more people, he and Clara should be able to move into their new home in about eight months. 

“The news coverage kind of helped Paradise a lot,” Rob said. “Paradise was always on the news. ‘You live in Concow, you didn’t get burnt.’ No, it started here. It came over our mountains and ripped right through this place.”

Interestingly, before Clara met Rob, she lost her first home in the Poe Fire of 2001. She was a single mother, carrying a four-month old baby, cleaning up the ash on her property.

Looking ahead to the future, the people of Butte County have a lot of work to do. They are in the first phase of rebuilding, debris removal. There are over 400,000 trees to be removed. The project is expected to take between 9 and 12 months, with 128 crews working to get the job done. Despite the daunting task of having to put their lives back together, everyone who has stayed in the area remains hopeful. 

“I’m a fire veteran,” Clara laughs. “My daughter says a fire in Concow is like being bit by a mosquito. It happens at least once ever summer.” 

The post Faces of the Fire appeared first on Reclamation on the Ridge.