Top federal and state officials arrived to tour the damage caused by what’s become the deadliest wildfire in recorded California history.
Governor Jerry Brown was joined by US Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, along with leadership from CalFire and the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Chico today, vowing to extinguish an inferno that sent 52,000 running for their lives and to rebuild Paradise, a tidy historic community laid waste by the Camp Fire.
Authorities are thus far declining to say they’ve turned a corner, but that could come soon.
Despite lower temperatures and a chance of rain in the long term forecast, Calfire Director Ken Pimlott said conditions remain volatile.
“Vegetation is critically dry. We will still have conditions that will produce new and potentially damaging fires, an d so we’re not keeping our eye off this ball at all. I know there’s some rain in the forecast. I think we will worry about that when it comes. Right now we are focused on maintaining the pace, and the battle rhythm of this firefight across the state.” Pimlott said.
Clearly moved by the enormity, Governor Brown said he was nearly at a loss for words.
“It looks like a war zone, it is. It’s the devastation that only fires of this kind can bring about. Nobody’s really expecting it, but it happens.” Brown said.
Following some politically motivated sniping by President Donald Trump on social media, blaming California’s political leaders—Mainly Democrats—of orchestrating the destruction, it appears that the dispute has been resolved to some degree.
“President Trump did call me, just a few minutes ago, and he’s pledged the full resources of the federal government and I can tell you that California stands in the same position, we do have the funds, and we will help out in every way we can.” he said.
Fire victims are being urged to call their insurers and also to register with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA Administrator Brock Long said officials are working to transition people out of evacuation shelters and into some form of transitional housing, whether that’s area rentals, residences further afield or in FEMA provided trailers.
Long said people need to be patient. Infrastructure left on the ridge is in shambles.
“If you don’t have the infrastructure and you move people back in and there’s nothing to support them, that’s not a good move either.” Long said.
He said reconstruction after such a disaster isn’t simple
“You can’t just move the debris because we are still looking for missing persons and it takes time to sift through the debris. At the local level to make sure we respect the remains that may be in place in some of these homes. You can’t just go in and do the debris removal and ultimately move people back in.” he said.
Officials said they also developing plans to resume public education in the county, classes have been on hold since the fire, and developing plans for temporary schools at new locations.
For interior Secretary Ryan Zinke the trip inspired déjà vu
“This is my fourth trip to California, unfortunately every trip this year has been forest fires, and each trip I say this is the worst fire I’ve seen, and now we’re here today and this is the worst fire I’ve seen.” Zinke said.
Zinke has repeatedly called for better and more active forest management as a way to curtail fire. But salvage logging and other small scale thinning projects to remove dangerous ladder fuels, aren’t necessarily lucrative operations for logging companies. The removed trees are smaller, difficult to remove and may have little commercial value.
Asked to elaborate about best practices, Zinke responded.
“How did we get here? Wasn’t a year ago, wasn’t two years ago, this has been decades. Let’s get the example here, you had a fire in 2008, still a lot of underbrush, and you’re right. When you have a fire and you don’t get salvage operations within the first year, then the timber is a diminishing asset. Then, you’re actually paying people to remove it rather than having some value.”
Meanwhile, some health problems have begun surfacing among evacuees. Butte County officials confirmed a Norovirus outbreak at the Neighborhood Church, which is housing fire refugees. Lisa Almaguer is a spokeswoman for the County Department of Public Health.
“Norovirus outbreaks are common especially in shelter situations where you have several hundred people living very closely together. Individuals who have displayed not only symptoms of the illness that are physically sick have been separated from people who are well. They are in a separate part of the shelter, they have their own restroom facilities and they are being cared for by the health nurses.” Almaguer said.
Norovirus causes extreme gastrointestinal distress causing violent vomiting and diarrhea. Almaguer said public health officials are not empowered to enforce a quarantine at the facility.