Camp Fire: One Year Later | Paradise Fire Documentary

got gridlock basically everywhere [Music] [Applause] one year ago a spark at the wrong place at an even worse time turned into a firestorm of historic proportions we have passed by hundreds of homes burning as well as businesses oh my god the trees burning right now the campfire burned into the record books as the state's deadliest and most destructive fire ever the town of paradise was lost in just hours along with konkow Mackay Lea and the neighborhoods around them 85 dead more than 14,000 homes gone an entire community burned to the ground in the fire - everything's gone one year later the ground is still scarred the pain is still fresh but this community is determined to rise from the ashes seeing what they are accomplishing every single day Morlocks cleared you know it makes you feel like you know it's happening so people moving on it's not gonna be the same you know the town isn't gonna be what it was it kind of died that day so it's a blank slate now it can be anything at once we can learn from the past and rebuild much better it's home it's home I couldn't imagine going anywhere else and starting over [Music] I'm Addison Wade tonight we are marking one year since the camp fire this time last year our reporters were on the ground as flames turned day tonight as first responders raced to get people to safety and we have been there in the months since sharing stories of loss recovery and hope tonight we'll show you paradise as it is today how survivors are healing how they're rebuilding but we begin by remembering the 85 people lost in the campfire they were grandfathers grandmothers fathers mothers brothers and sisters most who died were found inside their homes many never got that message to leave with 85 victims there are so many families grieving the loss of their loved one tonight we bring you one man's story Julianne binstock he died with his dog Jack together on November 8th one year ago [Music] [Applause] it's a road well-traveled but this time it doesn't look the same well I know where I am I know where I'm going but these houses I know I drove by nothing paradise is almost unrecognizable for Philbin stock the streets the landmarks the memories all gone after November 8th I've never been in a war zone but that's what I would imagine a war zone to be he remembers driving this way a few days after the camp fire to look for his father Julien dad was one of two people they could not account for initially on the way back up to his father's the questions fill his mind what if what could have been done and why the first thing that struck me besides the obvious devastation was the complete silence this is yeah we arrived where his father Julien binstock lived feather Canyon retirement community this now empty lot was his home this is what's left of my father's house it's not what he remembers this was his home right here as you walk in you walk into the living room he goes straight to the dining room to the right was the kitchen and then to the right was the door to the garage the garage was right here Phil tried to get ahold of his father phone calls made to the retirement community went to voicemail the lines just rang within seconds engulfed the entire house Phil never heard from his dad he visited every single evacuation center for weeks to try to find him he made fliers he posted on Facebook his family didn't give up hope until an investigator asked Phil for a DNA sample saying a body had been found it took about two weeks to get the DNA confirmed sympathetically humanely kindly gently explained to me that the DNA test had confirmed that the body they found was my father Julian's body was found in the bathtub with his rescue dog Jack Phil thinks the fire came too quick and too fast before his father could get out when I think of my father now I think of his accomplishments Joanne was the youngest of seven children he was wise beyond his years valedictorian he graduated from Harvard on full scholarship and retired as one of the VPS for Warner Brothers he was simply amazing we miss dad you know that moments when I think to myself oh I wonder what this word means when I called dad I realized this don't want to call Phil is not alone there are so many other families going through the same loss it's hard to comprehend the names take up these crosses I want people to know that it's not personal the fire wasn't personal it took victims as it took them the grief is not a single emotion it's a combination of emotions loss sadness fear anger in some cases and one year later Phil is looking away from the pain to the memories of his father all that's left from his time in paradise it's good it's not gonna be an easy day you know I'm trying not to mourn my dad but you know much as I keep telling myself I'm gonna I'm not gonna mourn him and I'm gonna just rejoice in the good things the pain is still there [Music] so I would just tell them whoever's lost somebody up here go do something to celebrate that person I [Music] asked Phil what he's going to do on November 8th to remember his father he tells me he's going to his favorite sushi restaurant in Chico and he's gonna have dinner there he's gonna be alone but he knows that he's not really alone cuz his father will be with him for so many fire survivors the trauma of November 8th is still so fresh we're still living in it every day we still drive by our house we still drive by our businesses we still you know I look where my animals were in that yard over there I mean and so it that doesn't go away in the campfire Candice and Eric seals lost the home they and his parents lived in they lost their business all their belongings but they also endured a kind of loss impossible to quantify well I lost my father in the fire too he had a heart attack when my mom and my dad were evacuating and I called my mom and she said you know we're in the forebay parking lot in Oroville I said well we're gonna come she goes no everything's fine the Rangers are here they're looking after us that next morning I got a call from my mom say my dad had passed in the parking lot both Eric and his father are veterans he was the only person Eric could talk to about the horrors of war and they're lasting impacts which he said the fire brought right back and actually you know I have some trauma from the Persian Gulf when I was out there his fire related at PTSD from that and I pretty much ignored it my whole life and then the same thing happened here I was trapped I came to go get my dad I couldn't leave both the main roads out of town were blocked so I just stayed here and father fire grieving his father without a home his PTSD triggered and living in an also traumatized community Eric says one day he just lost his grip there's not like a lot of signs it's one day total meltdown I don't know it's like a explosion just the bomb went off and then that was it completely checked out so I ended up going to Menlo Park the VA has a good facility out there they stayed out there for a little while got some trauma counseling but I feel fortunate for that because you know at least I've had some counseling now he worries about his wife who hasn't had counseling I was grocery shopping it was a you know good day I'm coming back up the hill and I just lose it you know hyperventilating I'm crying like a year after driving through walls of fire for her life in a burning car calling relatives to say goodbye thinking she wouldn't make it Candace says now she's the one with the nightmares hyper-vigilance and the irrational paralyzing fears overwhelming like small things are hard it's nothing but it feels like everything I mean in that's that is trauma that's that's the result of trauma at 2 1 1 operator's witnessed a similar pattern among survivors who call in and a lot of things are moving now into recovery mode and some people just aren't there yet there's people that I believe are just now starting to be able to think through things and it's almost a year later thinking about how to move forward people are calling it you know trauma brain you spent 45 years building a life and then you get handed this the camp fire destroyed nearly 14,000 homes in paradise' of which only a handful have been rebuilt there are federal state city and nonprofit programs to cover the basic needs of survivors but in a traumatized paradise in a state with an ever increasing number of climate catastrophes destroying homes and taking lives mental health services are hard to come by they have the trauma of having lived through it and now they have the trauma of trying to rebuild through it or make their way through it and it's almost as traumatizing for some people to try and navigate this entire system the houseless neighborhoods of paradise feel hollow these days a year after the fire most of this town sits deserted but if you follow your ears you'll find the first pioneers of the new paradise starting to rebuild there's no more trees I had 11 trees here they're gone the fire wiped most of paradise off the face of the earth to keep it from also being wiped off the map paradise needs people people like woody Cullerton I was able to get back into town on Saturday after the fire and I've been in town almost every day since Woody's finishing the new house he'll share with his wife right on the dirt where his old ones do it he says the handful of people up here already feel like a community again but it's different now I don't know anybody that escaped that didn't think they were going to die and then how do you manifest I mean I stay busy so I put it off that emotional shell woody put on is working out okay he's making progress he showed me around the house and the finishing touches he's making inside wood he told us the shell recently he felt that start to crack it was a weekend and all the construction crews were gone and I sat out there [Applause] he heard it sound normal again that's sound it wasn't trucks all day and Jake breaks just that simple thing there the sound of the traffic on the road did I've been living next to for thirty years it just hit you what hey I'm home that simple it's familiar paradise spent most of the last year looking anything like home it was a picture of apocalypse chimneys popped out of the rubble like headstones a constant reminder of the day death visited this place and took 85 people we lost everything we lost 95% of every house every business the fire burned 18,000 buildings a year later almost all of them look like they've been erased past their foundations down to bare dirt most of paradise looks like what it is a giant construction job with no set start date how long is it gonna be before this is functionally a neighborhood again um I think in about five years I would see us as a functional neighborhood town councilman Mike Zuccarello knows plenty of people still waiting to decide what to do with their empty lots but he also knows a huge chunk of paradises population simply isn't coming back I think some people are holding on to that they want that back the old paradise the old paradise and you want things that you can't replace the camp fire claimed 85 lives and now it's driving many thousands more people here to move away the hard part is is like the town's never gonna be the same I can be as optimistic as I want to this neighborhood in every neighborhood in town will change in half a day the flames of the campfire destroyed the homes of almost 22,000 people in Paradise and thousands more outside town limits in konkow and Miguel yeah a handful moved back right away and spent the last year living in trailers on their Lots trailer livings not easy when you've got a big dog a five-year-old child Sarah Smith admits her family thought about moving away we just would look at each other and say no I can't do it I can't live anywhere else this this is home like no matter what happens with a town I want to be here I want to fight for my town but staying here takes a willingness to stare down a lot of unknowns when we did come back all these questions came up of oh my gosh is this even gonna be a town again what do we do with our lives what do we do with our five year old son is he gonna have a life up here the camp fire burned most of the businesses here even more that survived had to close the few that have reopened wonder how they're gonna make it work we're trying to figure out who is our customer because it was a lot of older people that lived up here before a lot of retired people a lot of those people are not coming back woody plans to move into his new house by Thanksgiving and he can't wait it's still small town America yeah but there are countless small towns in this country so you gotta wonder why would anyone want to spend the next few years in this one waiting for it to spring back to life for woody the answer goes back a long time back to when he first got here 30 years ago I reinvented myself in this town I sobered up here I got clean I got married I used to feel my life started over here disaster can destroy all the stuff in paradise but not the idea of paradise paradise was a loving caring safe community and it still is it won't be easy they'll be progress to celebrate and pain to heal friends who will never come back and new ones to me [Music] every town on earth sees its moments of grief and moments of joy as they build the new paradise up on this Ridge the people here can expect more than their share [Music] one year after the campfire so much has changed paradise is rebuilding survivors are healing trying to find their new normal we will continue to tell these stories of recovery and resilience but tonight we want to bring your focus back to the lives we lost and we leave you with their names Joyce Acheson Herbert alderman Teresa immense Rafaela Andra day Carol Arrington Julian binstock David Bradburn Cheryl brown Larry Brown Richard Brown and Rubert Joanne kadhi Barbara Carlson Vincent Kuroda Dennis Clark jr. Evelyn Klein John Digby Gordon dice Paulo Dodge Randy dodge Andrew downer Robert Duvall and Beverly powers Paul Ernst Rose Farrell hey soos Fernandez Jean foresman Ernest Foss jr. Elizabeth gone Sally Gamboa James Garner Richard J Garrett William God belt Shirley Haley Dennis Henco Anna Hastings Jennifer Hayes Matilda ishka and Christina heifer Lu Herrera and Dorothy Lee Herrera Ava Holt TK huff Gary Hunter James Kenner Warren Lessard Dorothy Lee Mack Sarah Magnussen John malarkey and Joanne malarkey Chris Maltby David William Marbury Debra Morningstar Helen pace joy Porter Robert Quinn Joseph rape toy for astray Vernice Reagan ethyl rigs lolene rios Gerald Rodriguez Christopher and Phyllis Salazar Sheila Santos Ronald shank Bernice Schmidt John Sedwick Donald Shores Kathy Shores Judith cipher Larry Smith russell stuart victoria Taft Shirley T's Joan Tracy Ellen Walker Donna where Ysabel web Marie we he Kimber were [Music] Carl Wiley David Young and one person who remains unidentified [Music] you

Channel: ABC10

Views: 96,163

Keywords: camp fire, camp fire paradise, camp fire victims, california, california wildfire, northern california, northern california wildfire, sacramento news, abc 10 sacramento, magalia, concow camp fire, magalia camp fire, butte county, butte county camp fire, paradise, paradise california, camp fire survivor, housing, camp fire documentary, paradise fire documentary, paradise fire, documentary, documentaries, paradise camp fire, camp fire one year later, fire documentary, abc10

Id: yuttFn9zZ-k

Length: 22min 5sec (1325 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 07 2019