At 7 AM on Saturday, December 15th we got a phone call from Butte County telling us that after 37 days they’d opened up all of Paradise right then all at once to all 14 zones to residents that got burned out. They were giving residents 24 hours to go see their property in person. We had to show IDs at the check-in point. After that initial 24 hours, all of Paradise was to be open to all people. This makes no sense to me. Why would they simply let everyone and anyone into Paradise? So people can just come into our town to gawk at the destruction? There will be a curfew when no one can be in Paradise between 8 PM and 6 AM.
Smileycreek had been able to port our Paradise phone number over to a device provided by Consumer Cellular (our phone service provider). We had Xfinity for our phone service and this device allowed our phone number to still work via cellular phone service even though Xfinity is currently gone in Paradise. This proved to be very helpful as we got the go-ahead before most others did via emails or social media.
As soon as we got that call, smileycreek said, “We have to go NOW! That’s the very same thing she said when we bailed from the Camp Fire. She’d gotten us out as fast as possible...now she was getting us back in as fast as possible to beat the rush that would happen. So weird to have the exact same urgency going back to Paradise as we had when we scrammed for our lives on November 8th.
We got two shovels, a rake and some towels along with our Hazmat suits provided to us by Butte County Environmental Health. We’d be going right by Home Depot on our way so we stopped there to buy leather gloves and some cheap yellow rain suits as it was raining. There were just a handful of people in the store doing the same thing as we were...running to get gloves and rain suits to then beat the huge crowd that surely would try to enter Paradise. Another guy and I laughed about it because we knew we looked silly but also knew we needed to run fast in the store.
We went up the Skyway to Paradise. They allowed one of the two lanes up for residents and the other lane was for PG&E, AT&T, Comcast and Badger Trucks to use. That lane was filled with an endless stream of trucks going to Paradise to rebuild the infrastructure. Badger Trucks are what I call “sucker trucks.” They are really big tanks with a 6-inch hose that is used to suck up anything liquid or muddy. Think of them as huge shop vacs on wheels. And they are sucking up everything along the roads and on land in Paradise...sucking up everything as it’s toxic ash and soil everywhere up there. They even have a huge “Badger Truck staging area” at the bottom of the Skyway.
We were stopped for about 20 minutes near the top of the Skyway as they checked all our IDs before they let us in. Then it got surreal. We’d seen the pictures of our home already. We’d seen youtube videos of Paradise after the fire. But to see it all in person is an entirely different thing. It’s kinesthetic and hits you in your heart and gut. The video below is what it looks like as we drove down South Libby towards our home. All of Paradise looks like this. All of Paradise.
There is nothing left of our home but a foot of debris. The entire first floor fell into the basement. All our possessions reduced to ash and chards one foot deep at most.
The video below is taken from the perspective of standing in our back garden looking at what was our home.
Clear Creek (aka Smiley Creek) is still flowing unchanged as it has for thousands of years. The space in which our home was has always been there and always will be. It doesn’t care about how it’s used. It allows for any and all possibilities. Dinosaurs roamed through it. Indians camped along the stream in this space. Our home was built and we lived in this space. Now, that space is open again for any and all future realities which will come and go and come and go and come and go for all eternity.
The video below is panoramic and taken from just across the creek. There’s my retaining wall project.
A neighbor has this pond. There is a duck swimming in it. I believe it was their pet duck.
We were big-time gardeners and prided ourselves for creating such a lush environment for bees, wasps, butterflies, and birds. The deer came around all the time to munch on our garden. There were a doe and her three fawns who were coming through daily and eating things deer don’t normally eat as they were really hungry and not finding much green in the woods themselves. This created unintended consequences as this deer didn’t burn up in the fire but starved to death after the fire. It was at our home looking for the garden which wasn’t there. The area that burned was larger than the state of Deleware so these poor deer had nothing to eat.
Nature is already healing. Bulbs are bursting through the soil and the big trees are still alive.
When we left Paradise we had just a few things we got. Most of it was from outside. A few pots and metal “stepping stones” and special rocks to us = petrified wood and a black and tan obsidian. Here is a picture of all of the stuff we brought back. We’ll incorporate it into the small garden around the home we live in now.
Here is the one thing that was a miracle to us. There are always these miracles. We have a special pot made specifically for cooking Chinese medicinal herb formulas. These pots are mass produced and were only about $12 when we bought ours. They are fired clay and unique in that the handle comes out towards the front the same way the spout does. This pot was in a cupboard in the hall leading to the side door of the house. It fell down into the basement along with the whole house. It is unscathed. Somehow didn’t it break? How? The lid was found away from the rest of the pot...but they both made it!