By: Catherine Schofield
Paradise, Calif. is a small town situated in the Sierra Nevada foothills in Northern California. It was where I was born and raised alongside the forest, open sky and exceptionally friendly community. When I moved to Reno, Nev. to start my college career I never guessed that I, and most people that I knew from my childhood, wouldn’t have a home to go back to. When the Camp Fire devastated the town and local community in November 2018 there was nationwide coverage and our small town was suddenly thrust into the spotlight for a short time. However, after our 15 minutes of fame has passed, the people of Paradise were left to figure it all out for themselves. Now, more than three years after the Camp Fire, the people of Paradise are spread far and wide all in different stages of recovery. Here are some of their stories.
Judith Peters-Zellner, 62, had just lost her reelection for her seat on the Paradise Unified School District board when the Camp Fire came.
“In fact, laying in bed, before I got up that morning of the fire I'm lying in bed, I haven't even opened my eyes, I’m thinking ‘Oh, I got a drive around, pick up all my campaigns signs’ and all this kind of stuff and that was rough,” Peters-Zellner said. “And I was still technically on the school board until December. So right at that very beginning of trying to figure out what we were doing for Paradise kids, I was still on the board.”
Now she’s living in rental housing in Roseville, Calif. with her two adult sons waiting for the PG&E settlement to come through. “None of us were given a choice as to what happened. It happened and the only choice you have is how you deal with it afterwards. For me, it was just move on… Although I do feel that I’m in a kind of limbo right now. We’re just waiting for the next thing.”
The Long Beach native moved to Paradise in 2004 from the Bay Area to find a safer and cheaper place to raise her family. After 14 years in Paradise, raising three kids, and being a part of many different community organizations, Peters-Zellner’s house was one of the first to burn. She was able to save some family heirlooms from the fire (pictured above) but has been unable to recover due to the pandemic (when two of her kids graduated high school, her daughter entered college and her eldest son moved in with her). But Peters-Zellner said that her kid’s connection to Paradise will always make it a special place.
“Paradise is intrinsic to my children's childhood and, you know, my kids growing up. So all my memories of my kids being little, whether it's birthday parties, going to the parks, school plays, whatever, you know, sports, soccer... So, you know, that whole part of my children's childhood and all my memories of that are in Paradise. So that it'll always hold that, that nice special spot in my, in my heart,” Peters-Zellner said.
Peters-Zellner now works at Home Depot (the same job she had in Paradise) and hopes to eventually move back to the Bay Area once her kids are on their feet.
Megan Evans, 26, was in class at Chico State when she got word that Paradise was burning. She and her sister were unable to contact any of their family in Paradise and could only hope for the best. Now, Evans graduated with a double bachelor’s in psychology and multicultural gender studies in 2021 and is living with her family in Chico, CA. Evans was planning on graduating the semester of the fire, but she said that after the Camp Fire she felt lost.
“I just was like, there's no way. I’m not gonna be able to graduate. Like I don't even know what I would do with my life,” she said. “My job where I was working got burned down too. So I was like, I don't know what I'm gonna do. So I was just lost, scared and confused.”
Evans said that the community helped her and her family a lot during that time.
She said that Paradise will always be her foundation. “I think the thing that I'll keep forever is just being friendly to everybody,” she said. “Like here in Chico, you can walk in the store, and the cashier just kind of like looks at you. But in Paradise, everybody said hi whether they knew you or not.”
Since she was in Chico, Evans was unable to save anything from the fire, but two of her cats (one pictured above) were rescued by her family, along with various yard decorations that are now displayed at their current house. Evans recently got a job as a call center representative for a local bank but hasn’t decided what she wants to do in the future.
Rick Prinz, 63, was teaching at Paradise High School (PHS) when he got the call for evacuation. After loading school buses with students, Prinz went home to help his daughter and premie-born grandson evacuate. After the fire, the Willows native was surprised to find that his house was one of the few that didn’t burn.
“A lot of times we just didn't talk about that our home was there with people. And then we would say, ‘gosh this would have been so much easier if it burned down,’” Prinz said. “But then we finally became just thankful that we had housing…because housing went skyrocket.”
The P.E. teacher and former football coach had a huge impact in bringing back some normalcy to the community.
“Our first game that we had back against Williams over 5,000 people came to our high school football game,” Prinz said. “It was packed from end zone to end zone. Sideline to sideline. Every seat. Everyone came to that game. And so we coined the phrase ‘One team, one town, one family.’ And we really wanted to make an impact for our town.”
But he was also a strong figure to many high school students who were struggling with housing and food insecurity, attendance issues, and apathy toward classes in the months after the fire. The story of the PHS football team was so inspiring that many stories were turned into a book (pictured above). Prinz said that after his fast-approaching retirement he is still planning on being involved in the community through the high school and its many sports-related scholarships and events.
Jason Liles, 18, was one of those students being evacuated from PHS on the day of the Camp Fire. The full-time college student actually had his house burn down in October 2018, less than a month before the Camp Fire, and had been living in a trailer with his family. After Liles and his family evacuated Paradise they jumped around different living areas for three years before settling in a new house back in Paradise last September. All the while, Liles kept his trombone (pictured above) that had been saved since he had taken it with him to school the day of the fire.
The Paradise native graduated high school in June 2021 and has been moving between Paradise and Sacramento where he attends college. This coming fall, Liles will be attending Chico State as a health science major. He hopes to stay in Butte County and become a pediatric nurse while following his passion for beekeeping. Liles said as he gets older he wants to be more involved in the town through various aspects.
“I want to, you know, make the farmers market bigger,” he said. “I went the last time it was open and there were like three booths. I would love to have that, and if I get more politically inclined, I'll join town council.”
Liles said the close knitness of the town is one of the reasons he wants to stay.
“I just like how everyone knows everyone,” he said.
Ginny Brown, 72, was another person whose house was spared by the Camp Fire. Brown and her husband helped their daughter evacuate early in the morning, but didn’t leave themselves until almost the entire town was evacuated.
“I had no idea. I mean, I packed a bag of a couple days of clothes, some jewelry,” she said. “And I packed actually two bags. Because the power was out and it was dark and I got sidetracked, I left one packed suitcase sitting in the house which had the laptop, the flat silver of my mom's, some pictures, some files, you know the insurance about the things you're supposed to take.”
Brown and her husband spent some time living in Chico after the fire and had always planned to rebuild. After finding out that her house had survived, Brown said she dealt with survivors' guilt and resistance from the insurance company, but is still grateful it survived. One addition to the house has been the labyrinth (pictured above). Friends of Brown had created a labyrinth in their yard, but when their house burned, they wanted Brown to take the stones and make her own.
She said that she loves Paradise’s “spunk” and the pioneer attitude that its residents have that have led to a fast-moving recovery.
“I love our little town… We did Gold Nugget Days in 2019, like barely recovering from the fire. We said, no, we're here and we're Paradise Strong. And we're gonna do this,” Brown said.
The retiree still spends a lot of time volunteering in the community with a local theater group, a domestic violence hotline, and a community arts group.
Ryan Wall, 27, was living in Chico, CA at the time of the Camp Fire. He was starting his first day at a new job when he heard the news that Paradise was burning. Worried about his parents, siblings, and rest of his family he rushed to his two-bedroom apartment and waited for everyone to meet him there.
“I remember just waiting,” Wall said. “I didn't play [the news] on the TV, I didn't do anything, I wasn't even looking at my phone. I was just like watching the window, waiting for my mother, my father, Cory, anybody's car to pull up.”
Wall had spent most of his childhood in Paradise and still visits quite often. His parents rebuilt their house as soon as they could and Wall said it feels like home, but some things are still off.
“...That's how Paradise is too. It's like the whole town just has that feeling of comfort still,” he said. “You know it's home. You know that you have all these memories here, you know that you have all these happy times here but it is also kind of like the ghost of those memories.”
Two items that now give Wall that sense of home are a replica of his childhood stuffed dog and a cow-shaped utensil holder that was salvaged from the ashes of his childhood home (pictured above). Wall now lives in Oroville, CA and works with post-adopted kids. Wall said that the church and its community that he found in Paradise is something that he will continue to keep with him.
Brian Gray, 63, didn’t think his house would burn. He went to work at his computer shop, Gray Matter, like any other day, but soon left to wait in his house until his zone was evacuated. He never heard the call but left when he saw burning embers landing on his lawn. After his house and business burned, he and his wife were able to buy a different house in Paradise that hadn’t burned during the fire, and Gray was forced into early retirement.
“I wasn't ready to become back,” Gray said. “I didn't know how bad it was, you know, that first week or two because you couldn't get in the town.”
As president of the local Rotary Club, Gray was the point of contact for many people looking for funds to help them get restarted after the fire. Currently, he is still a part of the Rotary Club and is on the board for the Gold Nugget Museum, a local museum dedicated to the history of Paradise and the surrounding areas.
Gray said that he’s been able to learn to appreciate what Paradise has to offer and not get frustrated with the little things. “[The other day] Wagstaff was blocked off. It said, one lane traffic, but it was 10 minutes sitting there waiting for these tractors and stuff to move around,” he said. “So, in the old days, I would get pissed off….Now it's like okay, this is progress. They have to do this so we can get better. It's okay, it's only a few minutes… So, the attitude change is something most people are experiencing.”
Gray said that his memory of the Rotary Club meeting the week after the Camp Fire is something that he will always remember.
“And then that Thursday, we had a meeting, and it was so emotional. And [I wasn’t] really prepared for, you know, these 50 60, 70-year-old business owners, you know, executives, community leaders to be hugging and crying and ‘oh you made it to so good to see you.’ It was…unexpected,” Gray said. “So I kind of expected, maybe 10 people to show up and for it to just be kind of somber, …and it wasn't. It was like, oh we made it. So it presented some hope that there was gonna be life after fire.”
Even 3 years after the Camp Fire, Paradise and its residents work daily to rebuild and try to reestablish the sense of community that was lost. Many people who lived in Paradise during the Camp Fire are still unsure of what is coming next and are waiting for PG&E to pay them what they're owed.
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