Ukrainian delegation visits to learn about Camp Fire recovery
By Yucheng Tang | Posted March 15, 2025
On a rainy afternoon, the Paradise Symphony Orchestra and dancers from Northern California Ballet performed for six Ukrainians who were visiting this past week to learn about Camp Fire recovery.
At the end of the March 14 performance, the orchestra played the Ukrainian National Anthem. Most people watching in the Paradise Performing Arts Center stood while the song played, and the Ukrainian guests placed their right hands over their hearts. After the song finished, some of them wiped tears from their cheeks.
Trudi Angel, the former artistic director of Northern California Ballet, is hosting three Ukrainians and invited the group to the symphony rehearsal.read more
At about 8:30 a.m. Nov. 8, former Paradise resident Paula Edgar received a call from a friend on the other side of town, warning her that a fire had broken out.
“We didn’t even think we were in danger at first, but we thought we would start packing — just in case,” Edgar said.
When Edgar took her first load of items to her vehicle, she saw the flames making their way up the street toward her house. She realized then that this was something unlike anything the town had gone through before.
“I told my husband, we have to leave now, but he wouldn’t leave until he found the cats,” Edgar recalled. “If I went out one side of my driveway, there was fire, so I turned onto Skyway. There were already towers of flames on both sides of the road. I didn’t know if me or my husband were going to make it out alive, but we both did, thankfully.read more
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.
I’m one of the fortunate in Butte County, unscathed in most ways by a fire that killed 86 people and displaced thousands. I haven’t lived in Paradise in many years, but for more than two decades, I’ve been within 12 miles of my childhood address that has names – Eden Road, for example — that have mythological dimensions.read more
