by Dave Waddell
Beyond the staggering human losses in last month’s devastating Camp Fire, another potential loser from the inferno’s toxic runoff are Butte Creek’s highly valued Chinook salmon during a particularly vulnerable time in their lifecycle.
Whether and to what extent that spring-run salmon population is poisoned by a potential witches’ brew of toxins flowing from the extremely hot wildfire won’t truly be known for about three years. That’s when most of the surviving salmon that today are juveniles are due to return from the Pacific Ocean to spawn and die in Butte Creek.
“My former neighborhood feels like a cemetery” Fear of fire did not prepare Paradise residents
by Leslie Layton
My childhood home is a pool of ashes contained by a cement foundation. The air in this once-Edenesque place smells almost acrid. The barn my father built from oak planks is a pile of rubble, with trickling aluminum melted into place on the ground.
At some point during the Nov. 8 Camp Fire that destroyed my hometown of Paradise, Calif., the white aluminum streams were trickling downhill as if headed toward the creek. No longer. There are almost no signs of movement on this still Sunday, Dec. 9. My former neighborhood feels like a cemetery.
Cops usher homeless off triangular island Intervention aimed at getting them to a Chico winter shelter
by Dave Waddell
While some who had been living outside for months on a triangular island of city land seemed quite worried about their uprooting, 42-year-old Cindy Hurt said Monday’s intervention led by Chico police provided the prospects of a “solution.”
With the arrival of very cold and rainy weather, Chico PD’s so-called Target Team, along with Butte County Behavioral Health and Torres Shelter personnel, tried to usher an estimated 20 residents off the land, which is bordered by Little Chico Creek and Pine, Cypress and East 12th streets. Some residents were still packing up this morning.
Camp Fire was a “climate disaster” Tiny temperatures changes mask dramatic changes underway that call for action
by Leslie Layton
2.3 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s how much – or how little, depending on your viewpoint – that the daily average temperature increased in recent years in the Paradise area.
That little temperature increase is what it took to create the environment for a deadly fire that would stun Butte County with its heat and swiftness, demolish almost 18,800 structures, kill 88 people and change the lives of almost every area resident.
Sure, there were other factors that contributed to the devastating character of what is now considered California’s deadliest fire. There was, for example, an increase in the number of sweltering days in recent years, reflecting our longer summers and shorter winters. Warmer nights, too, helped parch vegetation, making the Camp Fire unusually hot and explosive.
Camp Fire changed lives: a survivor’s story "This is what being a climate change refugee feels like..."
Allan Stellar with Angel
by Allan Stellar
That awful, awful day.
On that awful day, when Paradise was engulfed in flames, I hugged my yellow lab Angel goodbye. I woke up early, 5 a.m., and decided to leave for work without our normal early morning hike. I lived in the foothills, at 2,000 feet, some 37 miles from Chico where I had work to do as a home health RN.
I had lived in this off-grid solar house for a decade, enjoying the yip yap of coyotes in the country and sleeping on the deck under the stars on hot summer nights. Angel watched me dress that morning with an eerie gaze. It was as if she knew something was going to happen. As I left, I promised I would be back in the afternoon to take her for a hike.
Council outlaws price gouging in wake of Camp Fire Dearth of rental housing is big problem in and for Chico
Steve Depa
by Dave Waddell
Chico landlords who price-gouge in the aftermath of the devastating Camp Fire will be in violation of an emergency ordinance passed unanimously today by the City Council.
Chico City Manager Mark Orme told the Council that “city staff received multiple reports of significant price increases on rentals and other goods and services” in the wake of the inferno that has annihilated Paradise and become the most destructive fire in California history. The Camp Fire has consumed more than 140,000 acres, destroyed 9,700 homes and left at least 63 people dead and in excess of 600 missing. More than 52,000 people were evacuated.