Hi folks, just a quick update - the worst fire to ever hit California still rages after gutting the tiny town of Paradise, California.
My parents, my brother, and my sister all live(d) in Paradise, California. My sister's house is gone, just a fireplace surrounded by ashes and a shell of a car in the driveway. Strangely, the mailbox stands on it's wooden post. Maybe we should build houses of metal on wooden posts?
My parents' and brother's house were right in the epicenter of the blaze as it was blown across a small plateau full of homes and trees for fuel. It looks like a b*mb went off. Nothing left but car shells and tree trunks. We have no evidence yet, but we're pretty sure their homes did not survive. It's a mess. The worst fear of that little town actually happened. There will be over a hundred casualties, to be sure, most of them elderly and disabled. The fire swept the town in two hours, the evacuation plans were planned on a worst-case-scenario of six. High winds moved the fire extremely fast, and cars sat bumper to bumper in darkness at 9:30am. It was chaos.
I checked Google maps for traffic and every road out was locked up. I saw a shorter route for my dad, and texted him. He took it, got out quicker, but also got separated from my brother. Great. He drove through flames that were crossing the road, with a trailer behind him. Thank God that trailer didn't catch fire, he and mom are living in it now. My brother is living with me, and I took their older dog home because the trailer stairs were not good for her hips. My sister is hopping from friend to friend with her husband, her kids are grown and out of the house. Her dog and two cats are missing.
Here are pix of my sister's house, before/after