Camp Fire Survivor Says 'Paradise May Just Be Memory'

PARADISE, CA – Norma Payne had 60 cents in her pocket on Thursday afternoon when she walked in to Lavender Blue, a small antiques store in Durham. It had been a few hours since she’d left Paradise intending to head back to her doctor’s office where, earlier that morning, she’d left her fannypack with her wallet, driver’s license, bank and credit cards.

“Can I please use your phone?” Payne asked the woman behind the counter, explaining “I just ran from the fire.”

Payne didn’t have to say more. There was no need to explain that as she had been heading back to her doctor’s office, a police officer directing traffic explained firmly, almost urgently, that she’d not be making that trip. Get all the latest information on what's happening in your community by signing up for Patch's newsletters and breaking news alerts

The officer said that everyone was being evacuated and sent her on the road to Durham. The woman in the store was happy to do what she could and handed Payne the phone.

Payne didn’t have her contact list. She didn’t have her phone. Payne is 83-years-old and dialed the one number that had, for whatever reason, committed to memory – that of Shawn Gaddini, one of Donna’s two daughters.

Donna, her longtime partner, had been having health issues, and both daughters had moved to the area to help Payne care for her.

Gaddini at that moment was at the Durham Ballfields about a mile away. She and her husband, Frank, and their dogs had been evacuated earlier. She looked down at her phone, didn’t recognize the number but answered it anyway.

“Shawn?” the voice on the other end said. “It’s Norma.”

PARADISE

Paradise is not everyone’s idea of Paradise. The town that has been consumed by a fire that killed 29, destroyed 6,700 buildings, and consumed 113,000 acres, will never be the same.

While it was started as a mining town during the gold rush in the 19th Century, the concept of wealth never stuck there. The place was even known for a while as “Poverty Ridge.”

“Most people move here to retire and for the views,” Gaddini says. “The views are breathtaking. When you come up Skyway (one of the major thoroughfares in this city of 27,000), all you is what we call our mini-Grand Canyon on the left, Butte Creek Canyon.”

The area had been filled with Ponderosa pines, cedars, and firs. It’s an area of farmers and construction workers. Shawn says that there are almonds, olives, cattle, and rice.

“At the end of the day, you could pull out some lawn chairs and just watch the world,” she says.

Gaddini, who grew up in Portland, has been grooming dogs for almost three decades. She’s a National Certified Master Groomer, according to the National Dog Groomers Association of America, a professional organization that only gives that designation to people who have been certified in at least two categories and have scored at least an 85 percent or better on the preliminary exams.

She then passed a 400-question exam covering topics ranging from general health and pesticides to anatomy and, yes, cat questions.

“I really love working with dogs,” she says.

Gaddini says that she knew that while there was no question that she would move to the area to help care for her mom, she knew that it was not a great business decision.

“I knew that it would be different here,” she says. “There’s a bit of a broke mentality in this area. People, even those who are not broke, will look at your prices and balk at paying for anything that can be found somewhere else cheaper.

“So, you make adjustments and you keep moving forward. It’s that kind of place.”

It’s also where Gaddini met her husband, Frank.

“It was 6 years ago,” He’s a mechanic, works at Integrity Auto Parts on Skyway. He’s a mechanic. I’m a dog groomer with a mobile business. We make do.”

The two had been renting a home on Harvey Road since being forced to sell their home a few years back.

“We were very much upside down,” she says. “We weren’t the only ones. We never gave up.”

15 HOURS

“It was late Wednesday and I was heading home from my last grooming appointment of the day,” Gaddini says. “I got my check and my client asked me if my generator was full for the following day because PG&E had sent out an advisory about high winds and that they might have to shut off power. And it could be three days.”

Gaddini says that she really didn’t think too much about it.

“My generator was full,” she says. “Everything was good. I pulled into my property on Harvey. It’s not fancy but it’s home.

“All I was really thinking abut was where to park the grooming trailer. Also, I ran into my neighbors. They had just moved up about month before San Jose, getting away from the crime and drugs. I told them to get candles, make sure to have a bag packed.”

While Paradise was stunning before the inferno, Gaddini says that ever since the 2008 Humboldt Fire, “living here has been terrifying.”

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That fire burned more than 23,000 acres, injured 10 people, destroyed 87 homes and 167 other buildings.

“Every summer, the fires get worse,” she says. “We’ve just made sure each year to be packed up and ready to go. Because of the history, because of the worsening conditions, there’s no renter’s insurance for people. It’s a very vulnerable area.

“We had been packed up ready to go all summer. We were hoping that by November, it might be time to relax a little.”

Meanwhile, Gaddini had no way of knowing at the moment, but that her decision on where to park the van and being packed up would turn out to be two really important calls on her part.

“The next morning,” she remembers. “Frank is usually up and out before I’m even really awake. He likes to be out the door and opening up the shop by 7:30. Since my first grooming appointments are usually a bit later, I tend to sleep later.

“For some reason, on Thursday, I stayed awake. I was drinking a cop of coffee and went outside. It was a really weird sky. It was really cold but very humid. You could see in the sky a red glow from the north, northeast.”

Gaddini said she’d been outside about five minutes – she was already covered with ash – when Frank came driving up “like a bat out of hell” in their Ford Taurus. He’d been at the shop when embers started to fall from sky. And not small embers.

“There was one that was so big it was if you took a baseball bat and cut it in thirds, that was the size of the ember. And it started getting worse quickly.”

There had been no warning at that point, no reverse 911 call telling them to get out. They just knew.

Gaddini says the immediate decision was which vehicle to take.

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“Frank jumped out of the car, we got the rubbermaid bin with all of our tax info and the titles to all the vehicles. We quickly settled on the Chevy Tahoe pulling our retro 1965 Fireball trailer because the Super Pups mobile grooming van is insured. And we drove.”

ESCAPE

“We’re evacuating,” Gaddini says to her husband, Frank.

The couple were renting a house on Henry Street right by Skyway, the main thoroughfare called, “The Skyway to Paradise.”

A drive that normally happened in minutes, took them 40 minutes.

As they drove, they watched in horror.

Feather River Canyon where the fire had first reached the town, was on one side and Butte Creek Canyon was on the other side.

“Look, honey,” Gaddini's husband says at one point. “The other canyon is on fire.”

Flames were devouring trees in Butte Creek Canyon.

“Embers are flying everywhere and have started fires everywhere,” Gaddini says.

“We just made it out,” her husband replies.

“It looks like we just made it out,” she answers.

Durham, where they were being told to go, is just more than 18 miles from Paradise. It’s supposed to take about 25 minutes to made the drive. It wasn’t that way on Thursday. At times it seemed like all 27,000 residents of Paradise were on the road at the same time.

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Later, when they were safe, Gaddini heard about people who died in their cars fleeing the fire. It’s too soon for her to be able to think about it without crying. The tears may always come, she says.

“I just can’t believe how lucky we are,” she says. “None of us were hurt. We lost stuff, but we have each other.”

In Durham, they settled with other refugees at the park.

“I was frantically trying to reach Norma,” she says. “I was psycho calling her. I didn’t know where she was, if she’d been able to make it out.”

That’s when Payne called from the antique store.

“Frank had been getting ready to go get gas, fill the tanks for the trailer and I told him to head to this store to get Norma,” she says. “It was only about a mile away. It took him hours to get there and back because of a huge line at the gas station.

“I let my sister, Liz, know that we had all gotten out, that we weren’t able to grab much but we were alive.”

Gaddini says that Frank’s ex-wife and 19-year-old son, who both were also living in Paradise, had also made it out safely.

“That night, we slept in our cars,” Gaddini says. “It was freezing but we were alive. In the morning, we all made our way to Liz’s apartment in Chico. It’s small but she’s making room for us. Family.”

Gaddini says that while it sounds a little strange, she’s thankful that her mother has been in the hospital.

“I know that she’s OK,” she says. “I know that she’s being taken care of.”

PARADISE LOST

It’s too early to think seriously about what’s next for Paradise given that the area has been blackened, reduced much of it reduced to ash, and the fire is still burning.

Gaddini knows that the house they had been living in is gone. The Ford Taurus has been partially melted by the intense heat. The mobile dog grooming unit that is her office, her work, that she had tried to decide where to park, is still standing.

“I just pray that the tools are still since that the looters haven’t been there,” she says. “The same with Frank’s stuff. We don’t know if the shop is still standing but, at the least, we hope that the tools are there.

“We just pray that they’re able to keep the looters out of the area.”

Gaddini says they have no idea when they’ll be allowed to go and see what, if anything is left.

They’ve heard about some places being destroyed – Ace Hardware, Save Mart, Feather River Outpatient, the clinic that Norma had been to before having to evacuate.

Gaddini knows that there are plenty of places that have come back after devastating acts of nature – New Orleans after Katrina, Houston after Harvey, Paradise after the fire of 2008 – but she doesn’t feel very optimistic.

“It was a place where you couldn’t get renter’s insurance before, who’s going to give it to anyone now?” she says. “Paradise is a beautiful place but it’s also a propane and septic town. There had been talk of trying to raise money to upgrade but who is going to want to do that?

“I believe that Paradise may just be a memory, a fond memory.”

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Photos via Shawn Gaddini