Firefighter Remembers the Day the Camp Fire Began

It's been six months since the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history, the Camp Fire, roared through Paradise and nearby towns Concow and Magalia, killing 85 people, destroying almost 19,000 structures and displacing tens of thousands of residents.

The debris in Paradise has mostly been cleaned up. Some shops have re-opened, but off a main road, things look a lot like they did six months ago — a reminder of how hard this community is working to recover and how far it still has to go.

The Camp Fire began on Nov. 8, 2018 at 6:30 a.m. as a small vegetation fire under some PG&E power lines about seven miles from Paradise. It spread quickly, at one point, 80 acres per minute. That seven-mile gap vanished in less than 1.5 hours.

"Then I realized how serious it was," says Doyle Biswell, a firefighter with Cal Fire. He says by 8 a.m., the sky was completely black.

He made it up into Paradise before the single, four-lane road out of town got clogged with cars trying to flee. Essentially sealing off the town from first responders for about 12 hours.

"I kind of told my firefighters — we're it," he says.

The fire was closing in, Biswell and his team could see it racing through the trees and hear propane tanks exploding. They knew they didn’t have time to save any buildings. They had to save people.

But it was just one bad situation after another. Five people in wheelchairs were getting pushed up the street and their caregiver couldn’t get into her car. A group was standing in front of their home, refusing to leave. Biswell went car to car and door to door.

"I remember at one point evacuating people and was just screaming and chaos and people yelling at me people cussing at me, people crying," he says.

He remembers one moment that still haunts him.

"As we were driving and I see a house on my right hand side and a silhouette and there was a person standing looking at the house next door completely engulfed in fire," he says.

He had to turn his truck around to avoid getting trapped. When he got back, the person was gone.

"I'm pretty sure I know what the outcome was," he says.

Driving through Paradise months later, Biswell says there's so much about this fire that was unprecedented. He still can’t wrap his head around it

"This can't be the new normal, you don't sign up for this, this is destruction," he says.