The Humboldt Fire rattles Paradise, but my town is still standing

As I look down Skyway and see red and orange erupting from the darkness, evilly eerie cottony towers of flame-induced clouds, it hits me.
This is my town.

I’ve covered stories of nature’s destruction. I talked to people whose homes were consumed by the Poe Fire and the Storrie Fire, but it was different. It wasn’t my home, my town. It wasn’t happening here to people I knew before I had to write the story.
You can feel empathy toward strangers,. You even can cry with them, but somehow this is just different.

It’s my town at stake, the whole heart and breath of our community in danger.
Fortunately, my family and my home are not threatened at this time. The fire is about three miles from our house.

But when tragedy strikes a corner of something you love, it’s like a piece of the whole is endangered and you want to rise up and protect the very things you hold most dear-- your community.

It is my hope people have responded with outstretched hands, neighbor to neighbor.

What impresses me most about the situation is the shear nerve of our Town.

Though every major route out of town was closed to traffic, people seemed to be keeping their cool.

Angry traffic congested panic didn’t ensue as many predicted-- even when the lights went out.

People just did what they were told-- gathered up their personal belongings, said goodbye to their homes and let their faith prevail.

And our firefighters proved once again -- we are in good hands, the best of hands.

When you consider how much ground this fire burned , 20,000 acres from Highway 32 to Butte College, and you consider how many homes were in danger, it is a miracle the area wasn’t just flattened.

Instead of shear destruction, our fire personnel managed to save hundreds of homes and push the fire away from the most populous areas.

And while the fire fighters on the front lines may gather the bulk of the thanks, other heroes often go unnoticed.

Our police, deputy sheriffs, highway patrol, VIPS, the entire staff at town hall, Red Cross volunteers and dare I say reporters all did their part to keep the public informed, to direct traffic, to evacuate people and to help diffuse the enormity of this situation.

Some might say it was luck that kept the fire from wrecking havoc on the Town of Paradise, but I think we all had a big role in keeping things from blowing up in our faces.

Peace was kept.

We survived with only one way out of Town.

And we proved once and for all that we are prepared when disaster strikes.
As the embers die down on what is probably now a much larger fire, I hope we can show the same support to our neighbors as they rebuild their corner of “our town“.



On that note folks, I am scooping up my girls and we're heading to Oregon. Abby, my 6-year-old has asthma and this is just not the right environment for her. If my house is still standing, I'll post something when I return.