We were scheduled to have a visit with\nmy niece’s kid, Autumn, and her crony, Caylin, but they were both\nrequired to go to work and be productive today so we decided to make\nit at around 5:00 PM. To kill some time, we first took a spin to the\nAbbey of St. Clairvaux who was allegedly responsible for driving all\nthe funny pronunciations of French out of France. Not really. It was\na nice building but not worth a pilgrimage. Then we chose to drive to\nthe town of Paradise, ravaged last November by an absolutely\nuncontrollable firestorm driven by extremely dry conditions and a 70\nmile per hour wind from the southeast. It was a big story late last\nyear, maybe because the damage was so extensive and random.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\tAlmost all the buildings in town,\nwhich until recently housed businesses, have been destroyed. Huge\nexpanses of former residential neighborhoods are now scattered piles\nof rubble with rusty metal parts sticking out of the ash. Almost all\nthe trees are still standing but they are fried right up to the\ntippy-top and will ultimately fall down in all directions if not\ncleared. A shopping center which originally housed a Safeway, a Round\nTable Pizza, a liquor store, a Papa Murphy’s, an ice cream parlor and\nseven other businesses now is a back and two side masonry walls and a\nwhole junkyard of rusting metal items about five feet deep. The\nbodies, and nothing else, of hundreds of burnt cars are everywhere.\nThere were no tires. Motel pools are filled with fetid water but\nthere is scant evidence there were ever adjoining motels. The\nJack-in-the-Box sign is still there but the joint is gone. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\tAn RV dealer in town lost all his\ninventory including a large but unidentifiable Class A diesel pusher.\nOnly the wheel hubs and the steel cords from the tire beads remain.\nThe frames looked like pretzels. It is grim and very sobering. More\nthan 80 people were killed and about 30,000 people became homeless in\nminutes. The strong wind driving the fire lit up the whole town in\nseconds and the local firefighters were quickly overwhelmed. They\nwere lucky to get out alive, as were scores of civilians. The fire\ntook all the utilities. There was no electrical power until recently,\ndue to the efforts of PG&E and their subcontractors. Sewer\nprocessing stations were unable to run pumps and aerators. The water\nsupply was destroyed. Businesses remaining, other than the hardware\nstore, have no customers. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\tParadise is located on a ridge between\ntwo formerly gorgeous and scenic gorges. Nature has made a\nsubstantial comeback with lots of greenery popping up between the\nbattlefields of wreckage. There is an abundance of heavy construction\nequipment in town converting scorched logs to chips, sound logs to\nlumber, demolishing remnants of foundations and scrapping the\nthousands of tons of metal poking up almost everywhere. It must have\nbeen horrible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After a couple hours of checking out the devastation, we drove back into Chico and inchwormed our way through obnoxious traffic to the Bidwell Mansion, a gorgeous building located within the property of Cal State Chico. It is a very pretty building but we did not go in because it was closed. Still having time to fiddle about, we drove back out of town into the gorge north of Paradise to find that the fire had not just taken the town. On Honey Run Road, which borders Butte Creek, had, until recently, the Honey Run Covered Bridge, renowned for being the longest covered bridge west of the Mississippi. The embers must have been raining out of the sky from Paradise up on the ridge because they lit the bridge on fire and now it is merely some lonely-looking pilings in the stream. Nearly all of the houses in this gorge were also incinerated although we probably spotted about five or ten percent of the buildings which are still standing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Having seen enough fricasseed stuff, we headed back downtown to meet Autumn at a great Chinese Buffet called Kwando, which is pronounced the same way as \u201cwhen\u201d in Spanish. We had a long dinner with this great kid and were joined about half way through by Caylin, who just started a job as a sprinkler fitter. Ironic that there weren’t sprinklers in any of the former structures in Paradise, Magalia and Honey Run. Maybe a few more would be only partially destroyed had they been fitted with fire suppression facilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Click the link for views of Hell. https:\/\/photos.app.goo.gl\/RAy3GUornQRjtnfw5<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We were scheduled to have a visit with my niece’s kid, Autumn, and her crony, Caylin, but they were both required to go to work and be productive today so we decided to make it at around 5:00 PM. To … Continue reading