Im not going to answer that queson. Narrator and a giant Power Company under scrutiny. Is what pg e did or didot , grossly negligent . Theyve been bation, theyve violated the probation. If pg e was individual and not a corporation, i think by now th would be in p narrator tonight on frontline fire in paradise. Frontline is made possible by contributis to your pbs station from viewers le you. Thank you. And by the corporation for public badcastadg. Major support is pisvided by the john d. And catherine t. Macarthur foundation, committede to building a ust, verdant and peaceful world. More information at macfound. Org the Ford Foundation working with visionaries on then ines of socialhange worldwide. At fordfoudfation. Org. Or Additional Support is providedpo by the abrams foundation,it cod to excellence in journalism. The park foundation, dedicated to hghtening Public Awareness of critical issues. The john and Helen Glessner family trust. Supportipp trustwohy journalism that informs and inspires. And by the frontline journalism fund, with maj support from jon and jo ann hagler. Al and additiupport from laura debos and scott nathan. Paradise is. Th eres something about it, theres sothing with the country thats. The trees are beautiful. Just living in the mountains, and. T its healibe here. You saw hummingbirds and wedweleep outside under the stars. Its a tightknit community. Everyone is superstrong and resilienli here. You never felt more safe than out there in the mountains. Good morning and its. A redflag fire danger wning is in effect. Up to 45mileperhour gusts out of the north today. Ri t now, its 57 degrees. Humidity down to 19 already. W e up early the morning of the eighth. The wind was very strong. Pine needles were hitting the ro. Its a metal roof, and in my halfasleep state, i thought, iit raining . Any time you have the winds coming with no rain, its very nervewracking. The season, we were justate itically dry. Ow was just like, please, in a storm. You know, every now and then, i like to wake up early and make the guys breakfast. So when the wind woke me up, i said, well, this is a perfect time to get a jump on itn my phone was laying on the counrtop nexto where i was cutting up potatoes, and it illuminated. Said there was a vegetation fire in the cyon. R narratoevenandahalf miles from the town of paradise re had staaded beneath highvoltage electricity tower. The line was almost 100 years old and was owned by pg e, americas largest electricity company. The fire started, as pg e has admitted, from a piece of equipment that failed, bringing a power line in contact with the steel tower, so you had shards of molten metal that got thrown down into the brush. Narrator in high winds, Companies Like pg e can turn off inthe ele tricity in power to reduce wildfire risk. We had heard that pg e was thinking about turning off power in, in several different areas that were in danger of high winds and possibly something happening with power lines. To nar but that morning, pg e had decided not to turn off the power. We would later say this was because the wind decreasing. I made one coer around highway 70 to where you can acally see the pulga bridg and so i took my eyes off s e road for two seconds, looked upo saw it and made my report. rad static hissing people talking on radio narrator the fire s by a narrow dirt track called camp creek roadro captain mckenzie decided it was too dangerous to drive a fire truck down it. Narrato he requted air support to put out the fire, but it was too windy to fl it was a very sinkg, very uncomfortable feeling seeing where it was at, um, and seeing how small it actually was relative to where it was at. It was a manageablelo fire, if i could get to it. So. But you couldnt get to it. Couldnt get to it. radio static hissing woman talking on radio narrator the fire was spreing towards concow, a remote settlement of around 700 people, about halfway between where the fire ignited and paradise. I got g couple of phone calls fr other chief officers asking if i wasaying attention to the radio. You know, i think like a lot of people, didnt really take it too serious get a lot of fires up there. You know, i told them, you know, ts cold, you know, its 40s, its november, its a nuisance fire. The incidentommand post was set up at the Hardware Store at yankee hil anso we were preparing to defend concow and contain that fire. woman talking on radio go ahead. 2107. Narrator cal fire the state fire Service Began sendinfirefighters to tackle the blaze in concow. I drove up highway 70 and ahe wind was basically blowing all us. Smoke right over the top of nartor the blaze was soon dubbed the camp fire, after the road where it started. We were stopping down concow, helped out a few the spot fires out around their house. They were relatively small, they were t to 15, maybe 20 feet. And then there was a point in there where the wind just kind of started picking up, and the spig fires that were not a b deal at the time started gulfinguboth sides of the road. My pops had been in concow ever since i can remember, its always felt so special. Its at the end of concow road. Felt like nothing could hurt uss there. And it was home sweet home. Narrator 21yearold jordan huff often visited her granddad, who lived on his own on a small farm. Hed grow pumpkins for the grandkids. To so in r, when they were ready to harvest, wed have jackolanterns to carve. And they were poas pumpkins and they were bigger than my pops lost his la. Farming incident, but theyre the stubborn mountain folk. He was alws outside rking when we showed up, out in his wheelchair working awa a narrator by 7 the fire had picked up. P. The wind was spraying buing embers in every direction. A column of smoke was now visible for mis. My dad had called my pops. Was out there in hisn wheelchair, um, with a hose, um, putting out the fires that were breaking out into his yard, and my dad was, like, you wow, dont worry about it, you need to go. You need to get out of here and and he said, okay, i will. Ill grab the dogs and ill go. Narrator firefighter jeff edson ana colleague were now trapped down by concow lake. We came across ur individuals that were running, and they were waving their hands at me, and you could tellr they had eurns and stuff on their skin and their hair. Three of them ran and justjump straight in the water, cause they were taking so much heat. Command post, chieina wasent aware this was becoming a major fire. Just be ready to call in personnel that are offduty right now. Narrator but with firefighters in coow trapped, and aircraft unable to fly beuse of the wind, he didnt know how fast it was moving. We typically get our fire inteigence, what the fires doing, how fast its spreading, from our own line persnel. Um. Firefighters. What was different about thi day was the fact that as soon as our firefighters engaged, they went right into rescue mode. And they, they were no longer ablenor did they really care, w where the fi spreading. They were too busy on rescuingvi ans, and, you know, ensuring that. Of their own safety. So we didnt get g lot of intelligence on how host the spreading. Narrator the fire was moving towards the town of paradise, four miles ay on the other side of a steep canyon rain the past, fires have rely crossed the canyon, but the camr fire was nowding at a rate of 80 football fields a minute. telephone ringing the calls staaled coming in slowly as people were waking up in the morning, having their ee, looking out the ndow, and seeing what i couldnt see. telephone ringing narrator dispatcher caroca ladrini had been trained to handle calls reporting fires. Do you see ashes . Do you see flames . How close is it . I becae kind of far off cof d be away. S the street or two canyons narrator cal fe normally notifies paradise pof a fire is threatening the town, but they hadnt done so. Narrator as more calls came in, ladrinsays she contacted cal fire, and they told her the fi was north of conc arles from paradise. Did they say anything about the size or the inteity of the fire . No. N at that point, they dnt, and, and i didnt ask. Generally, a fire that far away would never even get close to paradise. Paradare police. Why are so many people calling about this smoke . What. Whats going on . Still, at that point, i didnt know what they were seeing. telephone ringing so all i could do was call cal fire back. What i said was, can you nfirm with me that this north of concow, that this is not in paradise . Op say theres ashes falling. Yes, its north of cof ow. Thats ohe words that i got. Tekay. So i continued t the peoplehat were calling that we were not under threat. telephone ringi narrator by 7 45, the fire hacrossed thcanyon and wase threatening paradise and the surrounding area, home to 40,000 people. Cal fire issued an Evacuation Order for residents on the east de of paradise, bunot for those from other parts of town. Narrator 18 minutes after fire entered the town, Carol Ladrini received a call from cal fire when i started as a firefighter inhe mid1980s, we had large fires. You know, it wasnt uncommon. Anwe may be at a large fir for a week or two, maybe even a little bit longer. But then the periods would subside and weould, weould go back, wd regroup, and wed get ready for the next round. Now, in the current fire environment, the season is much longer. Drier, less humidity, and, typically, our winters have been on the lower end of avere. We measurclimate at weather stations, and whenires burn, we traceheir footprint. Those types of analyses have shown that humancaused Climate Change has doubled wildfire since 1984 across the western United States abe what would have burned without Climate Change. Ge narrator researchers say that in northern califnia, summers have warmed by an average of 2. 5 degrees in the last 5years. At the same time, Climate Change has made prolonged drought more common in the area. What weve observed over the last several fire seasons is that it doesnt rain until late in december or even earlyt january, and tanthat the landscape hasnt seen a drop of precipitation in perhaer eight months. Its that combination of factors, where you get high winds, you get the tigh temperatures, you have fuels combine all of those factors into a package that is reay explosive from a wildland perspective, where then, if you throw a match into that package, youre going to generate aro catae. radio static hissing allnits be advised, the town of paradise is under a mandatory evaction. The town of paradise is under a mandatory evacuation. man bathing heavily i was dispatched to the fire down on the east canyoe edge. So i sli smy body camera on an went behind the house. Oa i can caarring, and i could see flames coming up from, from the canyon that were probably 30, 40 feetight. pickering speaking on radio n arrator fire was now established on the east side of paradise. Police went doortodoor to ke sure people had left. The fire was swirling around the houses. It wasoming in at all angles. Defying any sense of gravity or any sense of, in my mind, what would be normal for a fire. Too much was happening, too much was going , and we were not able to do more than just a couple olehandful of streets. To narra Sergeant Pickering made his way to paradises largest building, featr river hospital. My husband texts me, and says, hey, theres a big fire. And i saidhuh. I said, i didnt see anything. Wheres it comg from . He goes, out of conw. And i said, okay, well, hopefully it doesnt cross the canyon, cause then im gonna have to evacuate the hospital. Um. And thene saw the orange glow through the patients rooms. For the moment,es. There was peoe that wer w having to carry an i. V. Bag with holding theirr own i. V. Bag. And then we had people that wer just coming out of surgery that had to be loaded up. Doctors pulled up with their s. U. Vs. And were putti patients in with doctors. Okay, hang a hard right. And nurses are driving thei owgprivate vehicles and tak out their car seats and leavingh em on the side of the hospital grnd. It wasnt a normal evacu th weve been planning and, d rehearsing, it was so fast. Hat was that . Anywhere from a finutes to 15, 20 minutes, everything around the hospital was burning and on fire. It went blk real quick it felt like, it felt like working a night shift. radio squawking pickering sighs we were stuck in traffic for quite a while in the hospital as everything around us is on fire. Well, wheres the Fire Department, wheres the hoses . Se why isnt anybany putting these fires out . You know, it was so confusing. I assumed that the fire was right there, next to me. I didnt know, at the time, that the fire had jumped all thway into paradise. Nobody said anything to us. Nobody sd, hey, all of paradise is on fire. people speaki on radio ultiple structures on fire here. Stt towards paradise. See the fires about to jump the road. E peopltalking on radio picture it like a snoww blizzard. T there was justusands upon thousands of embers blowing through the air. It was really hard tget your mind around how pidly it was developing. Narrator in less than an s hour, the fire swept acre town of paradise, overwhelming the fifighters efforts to st it. T homes, the hoe s are becoming involved. people lking on radio narrator the smoke, swirling with burning pine needles andus pieces of ho, turned day t nit. An area would catch on fire, homes would catch on fire generating heat, which would throw more embers, that would start another fire. And those winds can push those emrs a long ways. And it just kind of perpetuates into one b fire at once. There was no, there was no flaming front. Narrator in a typical fire, the smoke travels straight up, where cooler air puts out most of the embers. But in this fire, wind up of up to 100 miles an hour were blowing the embers sideways. T wind aloft that lofd the embers was a lot stronger wind than the wind at the surface. And thats what allowed it to. I tates plosion . Throw fireballs all over our town. I think thinshatt differentiates thifire from the other fires. That they all had a path, andt. This one did it really didnt. t it had paths. F it had a lotths, um, and they were all happening at the same time. Oh, my god ke there was, no sirres as warnings or anything. No o telling anyone re what was happening. So were, like, oh, lets go check it out. horn honking t, just get in the car and we cant even pull cause there was cars all the way down. You codnt even get on the road. Narrator jordan huff was trying to leave with her boyfriend alg paradises main road, skyway. Everything was red, everything jt seeme panic. I started freaking out, because thfires coming at us and i didnt wanna see it, i didnt wanna feel ee. Like, i didnt wanna be there. I just kinda wanted to sappear, because i couldnt believe this was happening. Ol bleep it was suffering, moving that slow. I didnt understand whd not everyone was flooring it. Like, we we all about to burn alive. Iv like, why isnt eryone, like, full speed ahead . Like, why are we stuck . Like, why . How . The town of paradise and the upper ridge has had a Community Evacuation plan since the late 90s. In the early 2000s, that plan was updated and included maps withones in them. Paradise is limited by the number of routes out of town. Know. Fire is different, you fires comecorom different directions. So we had to look at varyingan scenard determine what intersections would needulco rolling undeina noally veloping fire. Arrator the emergency planners had dided the town into 14 zones. They would be evacuated in turn depending on where the fire came from. We actually had a trial run 2008. We evacuated the zones on the coming from concow. Or a fire the whole Lesson Learned from 2008 was, the more you evacuate, the more cars on the rhe more difficult it is to evacuate the town. So we didnt have a plan to evacuate the entire town at once mostly because it wouldnt work. Our plan became, i think, probably one of the most elaborate plans in the state. Narrator in a review after the 2008 fire, a butte county grand jury warned that the towns roads had serious capacity limitations and made numbercommendations, including widening the evacuation routes. The countys governing b imemented some of the recommendati but thereas no funding to widen all of the roads. One of my personal responses to the grand jury was, if you gave us 10 or 15 million, maybe 20 million, to build newg roads off the um, maybe we could develop a plan that would get people off the ridge, you know, everyone off the ridge at one time. Roads cost a lot of mo on a average day, theyre builtt er traffic th doesnt exist. And then you sayre going to build four lanes that arent gonna be used except once in a, in a halfcentury . Yeah, that, thats gonna be a pretty hard ask to make. peopleotalking on radio . Gonna open up both lanes and get everybody out. people talking on radio l flames, get people moving, now narrator there were now over 350 fireghters in paradise. But with burning embers causing new fires all across the town, there was no clear front line for them to fight. Eo e talking on radio we conceded. , i can tell y was 9 23 inin the morning, we conceded that intaining the evacuation routes and civilian rescue was our only objective that day, and there was no orders given that contradicted that. Narrator although the entire orr, thousands odentscuation were still at home. sirens blaring my mom had me at 41. For many years, we we like best friends. Ent out redbox movies from safeway, whichas right next door, and hang out. And i could tell her anything. 2 narratoyearold Christina Taft and her mother, paradise. Lived in central i wasnt thinking it was that ous at first, and then i the shower, i started to smell oke. Ni i was dely panicked. I thought itouldll, like, burn. And i told that to my mom, and she just. She didnt want tost to that negativy. We werent really, ly,e, arguing, it was just kind of like i was saying stuff and then packing up everything i could into the car. Arke it was completely filled in the trunk and the tack seat, and just with thfront seat, you know, for my mom. It went on for a hour, k. She was just not really packing, she didnt get out of her pajamas, and then she artedop calling other to find out what was happening. Looking outside, it started getting, you know, traffic and darker. I, you know, i just didnt know what to do. Like, it was either i leave or ay and risk my ost life, and i had a life to live. Like, i told her that, lik i have a life to live. And she was just kind of, like,o lkineople on the phone, and they werent telling her, leave. Ne narrato christina j the thousands of others evacuating the town. Re her mosed to come with her. It was very slow leaving, but it was all burnt, like, all the way down. People w