Jan Wesner Childs
First came the Oroville spillway disaster in February 2017, which prompted evacuation orders for nearly 190,000 people over fears that towns downstream from the nation's tallest dam could be inundated with floodwaters.
Then there was the devastating Camp Fire, which incinerated the town of Paradise and killed 85 people in November 2018.
Most recently, the Bear Fire killed 15 people as it wiped out the community of Berry Creek in August of this year.
In between were other, lesser-known fires and, of course, the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.
Add that all up and the 220,000 people who live in Butte County, California, have been through a streak of disasters that would push any community to its brink.
"That cumulative trauma and that cumulative impact on my community has certainly taken its toll," Sheriff Kory Honea told weather.com in a recent interview. "Everybody is on edge, everybody has concerns and worries about what is going to happen next."
The Struggle of Survivors
Experiencing a weather-related disaster, including wildfire, can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder. Demand for mental health services increased after the Camp Fire, according to the Chico Enterprise-Record, but dropped off this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
This raised concerns that fire survivors – especially the elderly population, which was among the hardest-hit by the Camp Fire and tends to be more isolated to begin with – wouldn't get the help they need, according to Shannon Simmons, director of a Butte County senior services program.
"When you don't have basic needs or are very insecure ... that is going to drive up stress levels, which will compound physical and mental health issues," Simmons told the Enterprise-Record. "In rural areas in particular, they are often lower-income, they don't have access to transportation and are socially isolated .. and may be disconnected from the community at large."
(MORE: Paradise, California, High School Class of 2019 Rises Above Flames and Destruction to Graduate)
More than three-quarters of those killed in the Camp Fire were over the age of 65, according to the Los Angeles Times. More than half of those killed in the Bear Fire were also in that age group.
The Bear Fire, part of what became the North Complex Fire, was one of a string of wildfires sparked by lightning among dry, windy conditions in August. It's tied for the fifth-deadliest wildfire ever recorded in California history, according to Cal Fire, and is considered one of the most destructive in terms of structures burned.
The Camp Fire ranks No. 1 in both categories. It was ignited by Pacific Gas and Electric Co. electrical equipment. Earlier this year, PG&E pleaded guilty to 85 felony charges in connection with its role in starting the fire.
But experts say weather – specifically, ongoing extreme drought made worse by a trend in hotter temperatures fueled by global warming – is what made conditions ripe for the fires to become so fierce. Ten of the largest wildfires on record in California have happened in the past decade, including five of the top six just this year.
David Little, a Butte County native and former longtime editor of the Enterprise-Record, told weather.com the county had barely begun to recover when 2020's historic fire season kicked off.
"We’re still suffering and this year’s fires only made it worse," Little said.
"We weren’t even close to getting on our feet. The rebuilding effort takes a whole lot longer than anybody expects. It took a year (after the Camp Fire) just to clean up. And then trying to figure out septic systems and electricity and water systems that were contaminated and everything else. It’s just a long, painful process and a lot of people don’t want to go through that."
In this photo from October 2019, crosses line the road to remember the people who died as a result of the Camp Fire.The Camp Fire destroyed 14,000 homes in Butte County. The Bear Fire took out hundreds more homes and businesses.
As of early November, 440 single-family homes and 70 multi-family units had been rebuilt in Paradise, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. People were living in RVs on about 500 properties.
About 27,000 people lived in Paradise when the fire hit. That number now sits at about 5,000.
Local artist Jess Mercer, who sculpted a phoenix out of thousands of keys to burned buildings and cars, told the Chronicle that Paradise is "one hell of a resilient town," but there's a limit to what some survivors can take.
"People are soul tired," Mercer said.
Little's take on the time since the Camp Fire: "It’s just a two-year-long nightmare."
Little is executive vice president of the North Valley Community Foundation, which serves four counties, including Butte. The foundation has already given out $260,000 in funding to help fire recovery efforts this year, $1.1 million in coronavirus response and $36 million since the Camp Fire. Little said grants for the Camp Fire are expected to go on for another two to three years.
(MORE: Climate Change Contributed to Oroville Spillway Collapse, Study Says)
Many residents who suffered losses are still waiting for insurance payouts, and for payments from PG&E, which filed for bankruptcy and reached a $13.5 billion settlement with fire victims, according to the Chronicle.
"We just need a lot," Little said of the community. "We need everything. And I guess some people would argue we need patience, too, but two years of waiting for a home is difficult on a lot of people. And that’s just the fire victims. I think a lot of people in our community, too, are so tired of the smoke in the summer after seeing this now for several summers in a row where they’re just like, 'Why do I put myself through this?'"
Smoke from wildfires this year smothered communities along the West Coast all the way from Los Angeles to Vancouver, creating dangerously unhealthy air quality levels.
"It was smoky and it was hard to breathe – it was really depressing," Little said. "Almost like seasonal affective disorder you get in the winter if you live in an area where it rains a lot, it was like that with the smoke. I mean, we didn’t see the sun for a month because the smoke was so bad and you’d try to escape and there was no place to escape to in California because it was on the coast, it was in the mountains, it was in the valleys."
What The Future Holds
While wildfire smoke exacerbates existing conditions like asthma, research has shown that exposure to it could also lead to premature deaths.
It's also a mental health trigger for those who survived previous fires. Honea said people start calling 911 as soon as they see smoke in the air.
At the same time, those who are rebuilding stick it out.
"Some people did feel hopeless and gave up and moved because they just couldn’t put up with it anymore. But the people who are here now are here because they have hope. They have that vision of Paradise," Little said.
"They hope it can become what it was."
(MORE: A Town Destroyed: Before and After Photos from Paradise, California)
As for the weather, things aren't looking much better. A weather station in Tehama County, just north of Butte County, had its driest fall in 88 years of record-keeping. NOAA's Climate Prediction Center is forecasting a drier than average winter.
"A lack of precipitation during the wet season in California through spring would spell trouble for the ongoing drought and the threat of wildfires in summer and fall 2021," said weather.com senior meteorologist Jonathan Erdman.
And scientists say things are likely to get worse long-term unless global greenhouse gas emissions that fuel global warming are curbed.
All that being said, Honea said he doesn't know of a better place to live than Butte County.
"I don’t know of any part of the world for that matter that is immune or secure from the potential of disaster," Honea said. "If you can tell me where that is, let me know and I’ll put it on my list of potential places to retire."
As for recovery, "I'll let you know when we get there," Honea said.
"My hope is that we in Butte County will have been deemed to have paid our dues and we’ll get a little break."
Firefighters search through a burned residence after the passage of the Bear Fire, part of the larger North Lightning Complex fire, in the Berry Creek area of unincorporated Butte County, California, on Sept. 14, 2020.The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.
The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.
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