Nothing anyone says, no photos or videos relate the intensity of our experiences fleeing the Camp Fire. Even for professional fire fighters, it was beyond anything they’d ever imagined — “the scale of this one is mind-boggling” said one fire fighter. A video released yesterday by CalFire relates the first hours of the fire, calls to 911, and how fire fighters responded to the chaos even as their own homes burned and their families fled to safety.
While the Camp Fire may have been the first fire disaster of this type — a blizzard of embers carried by exceptionally strong winds across miles of exceptionally dry vegetation onto residences not designed to be resistant to burning, igniting thousands of blazes in myriad spots simultaneously — it will not be the last. No town wants to be the next Paradise, and yet some people who experienced what this video relates are determined to return to the area and rebuild another town on the fire footprint.
Among the people who raced out dodging flames, who lost everything (including family members and friends in some cases), who have done this before in less extensive fires (e.g., the Butte Lightning Complex Fires of 2008), are some determined to rebuild in Paradise, Magalia, and Concow. Friends of mine whose home survived the flaming wall of fire in 2008 and again the survived the larger ember blizzard catastrophe in 2018 now live amidst devastation. Their initial plan post-fire was to repair the fire damage to their land and use their home as a rental to help support them in a new area. But, within months of returning home, they’ve changed their minds. “The angel of death passed over us twice. Concow is home and we’re staying.”
Certainly the situation has changed in the Camp Fire footprint. With 90% of Paradise and Concow homes gone, PG&E removing all trees with any chance of falling on a power line, and the debris cleanup crews removing trees dead or damaged enough to pose a risk to rebuilding, residential areas no longer have the same type of fire danger. If new vegetation growth like weeds, re-sprouting trees and shrubs, and ornamental plantings are handled properly, the fire risk from vegetation around the homes will not recreate what existed pre-fire. Newly built homes must meet fire risk reduction standards related to building materials and design (e.g., no open vents where embers can enter the structure). Although new homes won’t present the same degree of fire risk, it is not an elimination of risk. The homes are still built of flammable materials in a Mediterranean ecosystem evolved to require wildfires.
The topography has not changed and still limits routes out of these communities. Concow Road is two lanes of winding hilly terrain, 7 miles long with multiple dead end roads leading off the main road into the adjacent slopes. Paradise is atop a ridge with a steep drop off to canyons on two sides, twisting routes downhill on the third side, and an upslope route to higher elevations on the fourth. Within the communities, side roads could be reconfigured to limit dead end traps. But new development of major exit routes is restricted by topography and funding. Designing and constructing new fire escape roads will not be an immediate solution. Surviving homes are occupied now and new homes will be built long before new exit roads are constructed.
Is rebuilding Paradise wise? Should the local and federal governments fund new exit roads? Do people have the right to return to an area after a disaster that isn’t a one off? If people return to a high fire risk area, should they expect protection from fire fighters when the next fire hits?
For insurers, the Camp Fire was 2018’s most expensive disaster, an estimated $16.5 billion in total losses. CalFire spent $94 million fighting the fire. Debris clean up by the CA OES and FEMA is estimated to cost $3 billion. The residential water systems in Paradise and Magalia contaminated with benzene and other VOCs will cost millions to replace. All these expenses omit the cost of housing refugees in shelters and FEMA camps and of survivor support after evacuation. It doesn’t include the cost to repair roads deteriorating as hundreds of dump trucks travel daily within the fire footprint and then down into the valley where debris is stockpiled.
Before the fire, Paradise was the largest town west of the Rockies without a sewer system. All homes and businesses were on private septic tanks and most were destroyed or damaged by the fire and debris clean up operations. The Town of Paradise proposes to establish a sewer system for businesses, while residences will remain on private septic tanks. A sewer system must be built from scratch, including all the wastewater treatment facilities.
Who has the authority to say “No, we will not rebuild Paradise?” Banks and insurers have some authority as they choose whether or not to finance and insure homes and businesses in high fire risk areas. Since the fire, people report their fire insurance increased exponentially for surviving homes and proposed new homes. Even before the fire, some homes were purchased without fire insurance because insurers weren’t willing to take the risk.
All the billions of dollars spent to cope with the fire, the evacuated population, the post-fire clean up, and the infrastructure needed to re-establish a town might better be spent to relocate people, to create a new residential area without high risk of wildfire. The cost of processes and policies designed to limit the fire risk in rebuilding Paradise is excluding many people from returning. It’s a type of gentrification that recreates Paradise for people with more money, not for everyone who lived there before the fire. What happens to people who can’t afford the new Paradise?
This type of decision-making is part of the climate crisis. Should we send fire fighters into non-survivable situations and hope they can ad lib a solution? How many times will Paradise and Concow be rebuilt following fire? Right now, Concow is on a once a decade wildfire destruction and rebuild cycle. What about New Orleans that evacuated due to flash flooding on Wednesday and expects nearly a foot of rainfall over the weekend? How many times should NOLA be dried out and resettled? Areas in the Florida panhandle destroyed by Hurricane Michael in 2018, such as Mexico Beach, haven’t recovered yet from last year’s storm. Washington D.C. recently flooded due to heavy rains on an area not designed to handle that much water.
After I wrote this on Wednesday, I read an article published today (Thursday) in MIT Technical Review that explores the issues involved in rebuilding Paradise: A wildfire destroyed Paradise, California. Residents are rebuilding—but should they? What the struggle to resurrect Paradise, California, teaches us about the impossible choice between climate fight and flight. It details realities of rebuilding versus relocating, including the psychological obstacles of clinging to what people consider their homeland.
We are privileged if we have the luxury of thinking about this, to ponder when do we rebuild and when do we retreat. When it isn’t your disaster, your community destroyed, it’s easier to think logically about costs and the point at which recovery is not beneficial. If you have this privilege right now, think about it because few communities are immune from climate crisis consequences. You may not be near a wildfire, hurricane, or flood risk area, but people fleeing these disasters (and the lack of products from those areas) will disrupt lives outside the direct impact area. Money isn’t necessarily a buffer from consequences, whether it’s your personal money or disaster funding. Many people in the Camp Fire area are living in tents in 100+ degree heat despite extensive financial support from the government and private donations. In Puerto Rico and Mexico Beach FL, people still have tarps for roofs, no power, and limited or non-existent government aid.
As a society, we who are not living under tarps must use this moment of relative privilege to cultivate empathy with those in the disasters so together we can set boundaries for what kind of climate crisis recovery will be publicly funded. How much money can we funnel into fighting climate crisis disasters as they happen versus funding actions that mitigate disaster occurrences? How will we generate funding to help people who have lost everything and who have no resources for recovery? What changes can we expect from people as a condition of receiving help? How can government and private funding through agencies and organizations ensure that individuals don’t fall through the cracks and be left out of assistance?
Repeating the horrific escape from fire described in the video (or other disasters like Hurricanes Maria and Michael) is a risk individuals may decide they personally are willing to take in order to return home. But the risk is borne by society, including first responders like fire fighters, not just by the people whose communities were destroyed. When do we as a society, as a government, say “enough” and refuse resettlement of areas that the climate crisis has made too dangerous or expensive for occupation? How do individuals who lost everything give up their desire to return home? Where do they go?