In light of all of the recent devastating California wildfires, Fire in Paradise, which comes out today on Netflix, could not be more timely. Fire In Paradise is a documentary that focuses on the “Camp Fire”, Northern California’s deadliest fire in its history, which took place on November 8th exactly one year ago. The 45-minute film follows the stories of a number of the people of Paradise, California on that horrible day including a 9-1-1 call center employee, the Fire Chief of Paradise, a mother and her son, and a teacher and her school bus full of kids. Because it’s 2018, a lot of the footage in this documentary was shot live that day. It depicts live footage of people driving down roads that are surrounded by a raging fire on both sides, a truly authentic vision of what living through one of these fires is like. It’s genuinely terrifying, gripping, and unnerving. It makes you ask the question “what would I do?” and “how would I react?” It’s not a pleasant feeling and the fact that it’s shot on iPhones and narrated by the people who lived through it adds an extra element of horror.
We’re taken through the fire chronologically. Starting with the 9-1-1 responder who had heard about a fire pretty far away from Paradise County and nicknamed it the “Camp Fire” because it was so small. She had no idea that her off-hand decision would create the name of a fire that was anything but small. We continue to make our way through the day as the town is evacuated. Some people who resisted leaving sooner would come to regret that choice.
I thought the journey of the kids at school was the scariest of all to imagine. The school evacuated the kids – the parents were unable to pick them up – and the teachers had to fully embrace the protector role. I can’t imagine being one of those parents – the sheer terror of not caring about your life in those moments, but just praying your child is okay. The teachers describe their fear and how the bus driver heroically gave them his shirt. They only had one bottle of water and rationed it – pouring a little onto shredded up pieces of the drivers shirt to give to the kids to put over their mouths so they could breathe.
A mother describes her experience during the day – the traffic was so bad that she couldn’t get out with her kid. A bunch of people were stranded with roads in both directions already blocked off due to the fire. A group of 40ish people were herded into a large parking lot, knowing the raging fire was 100% going to come their way and with nowhere else to go. They had to lie down with a blanket over them and pray they survived – they all miraculously did.
The Fire Chief describes going to get a family and their dog who refused to leave – he forced them out of their house as the fire was already in the process of destroying it. He describes driving directly through the fire as we watch him do it – with his foot completely on the pedal, we hold our breath, still shocked that he somehow survived.
These are just some of the moments that make your heart stop. After the fire was finally contained, the documentarians and directors Zachary Canepari and Drea Cooper got on a flight to Paradise on Thanksgiving Day 2018. Canepari was at the screening I attended at the Hamptons Film Festival and describes how the Fire Chief (whose story we follow on screen) allowed him and a small crew to join him while he and his team conducted search and rescue operations.
The footage they were able to obtain was haunting – for example, a path of parked cars with just skeletons left inside, burned all the way to the bone and unrecognizable. The entire town was basically gone. There’s a moment where it looks like it’s snowing but it’s really just the remaining ash from the fire, raining down as a horrible reminder of what just occurred – as if their burned houses and community weren’t enough. 86 people died in the fire.
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In the month that has passed since I first saw the movie at the Hamptons Film Festival on October 11th, where the film won the Audience Award for Documentaries, the following fires have raged in California: Kincade, Easy, Getty, Hill, Hillside and 46. After our screening, Canepari stayed around to answer audience questions. The first few questions asked surrounded how the survivors are doing now and what making the documentary was like. Off the bat he told us that most of the participants in the documentary described the process as cathartic. A year later, the town is still in shambles with a myriad of remaining problems. Some are in the process of helping rebuild – testing the soil, getting permits; but that’s only a handful, as most have moved on. The school teacher we came to know explains that she lived on a hill and had one of the few structures, let alone houses, in the town that was not destroyed; but she describes the house and town now as eerie. It will be a long road back and will never quite be the same.
Canaperi moves on to a question about why he made this movie in the first place. He explains that he’s from California and his personal attachment to this story was a large driver. But the other part driving him was his fierce desire to raise awareness about man-made environmental issues. He wants people to see this and feel intense anger – this problem exists not only in California but all over the world – we just aren’t doing enough. Canaperi references the Fire Captain’s speech at the end of the documentary, where he explains that no one knows these fires better. He further elaborates explaining that he’s been a firefighter for a long time but that these fires are meaner and harder to contain than ever due to fierce winds and drier than ever landscapes. He explicitly states that he believes these harsh, horrible rampant fires are a result of climate change. “Climate change Is Real”.
A few other questions directed at Canaperi asked him to elaborate on what’s currently being done about it now and how certain policies are changing. Canaperi first takes a moment to acknowledge that California actually has been receiving funds and aid and that many organizations are also helping. He then asks us to take a moment to think about all the places in the world that are NOT receiving even a quarter of the help California is receiving. It’s quiet after that. He resumes by saying that even all of these new resources can’t keep up – the documentary is intended as a call for action. While we’re on that topic, I asked him about how something as seemingly trivial as traffic, something we all have to sit through, can be a reason that someone dies – and I further wondered if there were changes in the evacuation plan for the future. He said it’s difficult to plan for in the moment because no one is expecting it; they’re thinking about maybe building bigger roads or implementing earlier evacuations. It’s a difficult process and all the stress surrounding it isn’t going to change; we must instead.
If you need further motivation, watch Fire in Paradise on Netflix. It’s only 42 minutes but it gives unprecedented insight into how devastating these fires are and how many Americans are being impacted by this man-made environmental travesty. If you want to help, first: vote for politicians who believe in climate change! Second: donate to one of these causes:
