Paradise, Ca-11/8/2018-Camp Fire

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This is documentation of the Camp Fire as it swept through Paradise, CA. Every picture and video that I took that day, in chronological order. The volume does jump around a bit due to wind or passion/worry in my voice.
Like everybody else's day, everything seemed to be normal except it was quite windy. The first signs of trouble were brought to my attention around 7:30 a.m. as my wife was leaving to take the kids to school and continue on to work, the sky was filled with smoke. I woke our 18 year old son and told him the we need to prepare to evacuate. Not having received any type of alert, I became obsessed with finding information of the location of the fire. I finally received an alert on my phone indicating that there was a fire in the town of Pulga, CA, 7 miles due east. I checked the "Windy" app on my phone to get wind speed and direction, this fire was being pushed towards Paradise by a 25-35 mph wind. My wife called shortly before 8:00 a.m. to tell me that she was on her way home because Paradise was being evacuated. Our other 2 teenagers were dropped off by a friend and they began to pack things that were important to them. I first packed a suitcase and placed it on our bed then I began to grab pictures and important documents. My wife called again (around 8:30) as she was just around the corner form our home. She was crying and telling me that there was fire everywhere and traffic prevented her from turning down our street because she had police with lights and sirens speeding up behind her. As we were loading the vehicles, I noticed hot embers rising approximately 25-35 yards behind our home. I couldn't see flames but embers were enough for me to know that it was time to go. Also knowing that my wife wasn't going to make it home, because of traffic, I decided to leave our home with what I could grab (I forgot our suitcase on the bed but did load the pictures and documents) and went to meet her. With our daughter with me and our 2 sons (with 3 dogs) in a car behind us, we left our belongings behind to try to meet up with her. We met up at Paradise Plaza and waited for the traffic to subside. We had no idea that we'd be spending the next 7 hours in the Paradise Plaza parking lot watching the city we moved to from Florida, just 5 months prior to this, disintegrate around us. As the line of traffic was at a stand still, we were approached by someone with CalFire. He informed us that there were power poles, trees, abandoned cars, and other road blocks making evacuation almost impossible. He also informed us that the people in the traffic jam were driving through hell and that we were in the safest place in Paradise at the moment. He said to use common sense and we'll make it out of there eventually. As the hours passed, more and more people filed into the parking lot and the traffic jam began to subside. What started as only a few people, quickly grew to 200-300 people. The parking lot had become a pre-evacuation hub for many people in the Paradise/Magalia area. Police, firefighters, and EMT's were also there to meet anybody's needs. With fires burning all around us, the shopping center managed to stay intact. Even with stacks of pallets behind Kmart, the building never caught fire. As we helplessly watched, structure after structure was being engulfed by flames. Explosions that were heard only towards the east, were now being heard in every direction.
CalFire was in search and rescue mode for the first 7-10 hours of this catastrophe. It was clear that their secondary objective was to protect power poles and trees from burning and falling across key evacuation routes. At approximately 4:30 p.m. I was contacted by a deputy from another jurisdiction that told me the Clark (Rd) was clear and to get to my vehicle because we'd be evacuating. I ran back to our vehicles and got in line for our evacuation of Paradise.
That 15 minute drive to the valley is one that I'll never forget. Almost complete destruction of the city that my family and I fell in love with. I did mislabel a couple buildings (I mistook the Mormon Church for the bowling alley) in the video as I'm speaking but everything was a blur at that point. It had been a long day and we were relieved to be getting to safety.

Видео Paradise, Ca-11/8/2018-Camp Fire канала John Klepps