All "Evac" bags are ready at all times neatly piled in the storage room, and three more empty bags await my tablet, night stand items and medicine chest. Now, after living through a disaster event, a fourth bag is readied, labeled "refrigerator".  After cleaning a refrigerator that had sat without power for six weeks I will never evacuate again without dumping everything into a bag and hauling it out of my residence.

A blanket folded across the back of my desk chair is ready to wrap my main all-in-one computer to be carried to my vehicle if I have time. With alot of pre-thought and calculated preparations, ten canvas zipper bags, three empty canvas bags and one blanket carry everything I wish to salvage and protect. I can move these Evac bags to my car in a very short amount of time, ten to fifteen minutes, and be on the road.

You see, when you prepare evacuation bags you eventually realize that what you leave behind will possibly be lost, gone forever. You can not hire a U-Haul truck and pack and load it. If you are wise, you will emotionally let go of everything else while you are packing and organizing your Evac Bags. As I locked the door, fifteen minutes after the last Text Evacuation Notice, I said goodbye to everything.

Most everything in my studio was hand crafted, designed or remodeled by me. Refurbishing and repainting is a hobby of mine. It was all a lot of work and sweat, but I could let it go. I simply acknowledged my rehearsed speech in my mind, "I can do it all again." "I have always known this day could come." "I got this!" I had a mobile trailer as well as the studio. The trailer was locked tight and on the other side of town. I had spent the nights at the studio for the last few weeks since I had to move my trailer away from it's home location of very tall drought diseased pine trees.

I remember clearly over the years, the days of frustration when I needed an antibiotic, or a medicine that was stored in the Evac bags and I had to go and fish out what I needed. It was often the same when going to get boots or a heavy raincoat, all in Evac bags ready to go. So, at times, normal life required me to "live-out-of" my Evac Bags. It was annoying and frustrating, digging simple things out of piles of bags in the store room. But I had it so together during the evacuation of the town Paradise, that when I latched the studio door, I said my goodbyes without tears or distress because I had everything with me that I would need and had already detached from everything else should I have to give it all up.

This is a "mindset". This mindset can determine how well you cope with the event and prevent you from making hurried mistakes long after the event has you in it's aftermath grip. Being the long devoted Climate Researcher that I am, I have had this mindset for many years. Everything could be temporary. Everything can vanish in a disaster event. Your entire life and everything you own can fall away from you in a flash and leave you standing naked on a cliff facing nothing where your life once was. It's sounds difficult, we are all a little spoiled with our sense of securities and control over life, but once you see that the world you live in is volatile, hostile, fragile and shifty, it's an easy mental exercise to believe in.

At least twenty of the last 30 years, I have been ready to roll, prepared and mentally poised. So, of course, I fared very well emotionally during the evacuation event, and keeping a level head I managed to go through the steps of getting water and food for myself and my parents and the second day of evacuation I went immediately to stores and got them both winter clothing and more blankets. I had both summer and winter clothing with me already. Three days later the stores were full of people in lines. One week later the shelves were near empty and sparse of t-shirts, pants, sweaters, jackets, underwear, socks, etc . Shelters were just now being set up and NEW clothing donations were not yet accumulating for several days post fire.

Evacuees were in shorts and t-shirts and having nothing but the clothes on their backs, they were cold. By 1:PM the day of the fire, it was cold. People were shivering in the Chico parking lots and staying warm in their cars, a thousand or more, parked everywhere. The weather had changed suddenly due to the fire and all of the all over the city. By the next late morning, my parents were in warm clothing although they were still in shock and grieving and hardly knew what they were wearing.

I had driven to another nearby town and purchased appropriate cold weather clothing for my parents on the first morning after the day of the fire. My mother was just beginning to realize that they had all summer gear in their small motorhome. I was on time.

I was not in shock. I was in a hazy sluggish daze of a fast moving movie. But I performed without hesitation. By the afternoon of the first day after the fire, I was online with my mother in her warm clothing on my tablet, in their motorhome, parked at a friends house in the valley outside of Chico. My daughter logged me onto her facebook account and we began looking for people to see how they fared.

Day three after the fire, I contacted my daughter to retrieve me. She was ready and had made all arrangements to free herself to collect me. My parents had decided to stay at their friends property near Chico and their doctors. My Dad's health was very bad. Their kind friend, who owned the property my parent's were staying on, was a nurse. I spoke with him and he convinced me they were safer under his watchful eye, near their doctors until things settled down. I agreed and took my car to a nearby gas station and filled the tank, had the tires and oil checked and waited with my grieving parents for my daughter to arrive.

My daughter routed herself around jammed highway lines of emergency, fire and service vehicles to Orland California, where she hugged my parents, cried with them, and took half the weight out of my small car and heaved it into her truck and we were off to HWY 5 towards Sacramento. I followed her on the course she set around the crisis area to get us to her home. The sky was dark grey with smoke filling the valley. News of school closures in Sacramento due to the thickening layer of smoke came the day prior. I had a sore throat from the smoke, my back ached and I was fatigued but almost to my shelter.

I set up a very comfy camp in my daughters lovely living room where I would be for six weeks. I set up my laptop, my tablet and two cell phones in a office style corner and conducted everything from there in the weeks to come.

It began about a week later with my parents. They could not find any rentals nearby. They could find no housing to buy. They could find no RV parks empty. Their trips to the emergency room at the hospital in Chico were regular, my fathers health was very poor and his breathing became difficult. He had a respiratory infection. He needed antibiotics, then he needed more antibiotics. They stayed in their motorhome, telling me that their nurse friend prepared dinners for them every night and hooked them up to hot showers and they wanted to stay there. They wanted to find and be near their friends.

My parents knew fairly early that they had lost two friends in the fire, a married couple. About a week later, I received news that I had lost two friends in the fire. Another week later another had died of heart failure. The news of the deceased was getting out now and it was very painful news. The grief continued to swell for everyone in those weeks of waiting to see who had died.

My parents did not find a place to rent until January, near Sacramento. All those weeks were riddled with constant phone tag between family members trying to find them housing and keep up with their emergency room visits. Everyone was frustrated, worried and upset. My mother cried every day as she struggled with the insurance companies, FEMA papers, registrations and her husbands tipsy health. The insurance company had 90 pages of check off lists of items in their home at the time of the fire and required listings for the estimated value of each item. This list included items like toothpaste, toilet paper, printer paper and every tiny little thing you could imagine in an everyday household. I knew my parents were slung into a hell that simply would not end for them.

Two months before the fire, oddly, my mother called me and told me she had prepared a small Evac bag and had all her meds and her important documents in a folder, just in case. I had nagged her for years to "prep". She said "You'd be proud of me!" She later told me that if she had not done that, there would be no way she could cope with the immense paperwork demands on her with no documents at her disposal.

Getting meds for thousands of people was a literal nightmare in the following days after the fire. So, EVEN that small "prep" payed off immensely. She conducted all her business from her motorhome dining table and her file folders from her Evac bag and they took their meds for thrity days while they fought to get more from new and old doctors. Their doctor gave them sixty days of meds and left for the East Coast to set up a practice there. How many of those evacuees didn't even have their medications for the next day?

It was cold and small in their little RV in Orland California and no family member was happy about it. But they would not budge. Things for my parents and their helping family members stayed in this miserable pattern for eight weeks. All of us were wore down by the time we finally got our parents into a warm and decent rental.

My own progress was another miserable tale and exposes how shakey and unprepared our emergency systems and our government systems in this country really are. I began first with filing for unemployment as my place of employment had burnt down. I was injured. I bought an inversion decompression table at Big 5 Sporting goods and my daughter assembled it to help me get out of the pain in my back.

Management of my insurance papers and notaries were orchestrated by my daughter "Ubering" me around Sacramento from her phone app while she was at her desk at work. I did not know my way around. My drivers license had expired in December. So I had to Uber to the DMV and then Uber to a Notary of the Public to verify proof of my trailer that was destroyed and the contents of my storage building.

My daughter (the blessing of my life) faxed documents for me from her office. Otherwise I would have been chasing around like everyone else with no home, computer, records, documents, attorney, etc., to deal with the legal and financial end of the disaster. I can not imagine what people went through. I can not imagine the lines in Chico at the County Recorders Office, the DMV, Social Services, printing shops, FEMA stations, Starbucks for wifi, Pharmacies, Public Notaries, Insurance Companies, banks and more. LINES OF PEOPLE EVERYWHERE FOR WEEKS.

The worst lines were at the Chico Post Office, where 30,000 people now had to get their mail from "general mail" at a Post Office smack downtown in the middle of Chico. A very congested area to begin with. There were no mailboxes left to rent right off the bat. And it rained! And it rained and rained and rained. Many streets had mild flooding and others had severe flooding though all of this. People were parking a mile away and walking to the Post Office to stand in the rain for hours to check "general mail" for documents they needed to deal with the crisis. It was awful. Having all your documents readily with you during a disaster is an imperative prep.

I had deeds, titles, partnership contracts, a will, insurance policies, birth certificate, high school diploma, dental and medical records, rental agreements, utility account numbers, etc. all at my fingertips. Won't you please note how very important this prep is? There is plenty to fight in a disaster crisis without lack of documents on top of it all. Having these things ready to grab and go, is crucial.

The Unemployment Department strung me along for seven weeks without acknowledging me or my Unemployment Account but requiring me to fill out a daily explanation of where I applied for work, all the same, sending e-mails telling me to fill out the weeks report or be denied benefits. Telling me (in one phone interview) they have never heard of an inversion decompression table and my injury was not valid. I never recieved any Unemployment Benefits. Ever.

By the following Monday after the fire on Thursday, the Unemployment website crashed. I know this is true because my daughter has to communicate with the Unemployment Department regularly at HER job. It crashed. They deny that it crashed. The overwhelming influx of at least 20,000 applications for unemployment in three days crashed their website. They not only did not have the funds for such an unexpected rush in the fiscal year of 2018, but could not even handle the website traffic, let alone the mountains of money they would have to suddenly come up with. They simply could not handle the situation. They literally blew off many applicants like they did me, because they could not financially deal with it.

SYSTEMS WILL CRASH all around you, even if only temporarily. Wifi slows to a crawl, services of all kinds bog down under a rush of new weight on their desks. Government systems will become disfunctional, even if only temporarily. Add that to the frustrations and distress of trying to get through lines to get document duplicates to move to the next step of the first steps of recovery. You need to depend on yourself.

I finally recieved two "warnings" from the Unemployment Department, to answer an interview phone call, of which I did, whereupon they asked why I did not seek employment on several days of which I explained that I had to care for my daughter (who was taken into emergency surgery in December) and subsequently care for her 5 year old daughter and that my parents were in and out of hospitals since the day after the fire and I that was chasing them around as well. I had to drive to a working cell tower area in Paradise in the storms and rain to even accept these calls.  

They were rude both times they called and continued to insist that I should be applying for work in Paradise. There weren't even any lights on most of the towns streets yet. There were NO businesses at all. No cell service. No water. Chico was so congested with new unemployed job seekers and refugees that there was no parking in the entire city.

I received letters telling me I did not qualify for unemployment. I received letters warning me of felony charges should I be falsely applying for unemployment and to not ever miss a weekly report.

I had no reason to be denied. None. Taking care of a sick family member is allowed as a reason to not seek employment on those days, as well as any other reasons I gave and I applied for work on the remaining days, all legit! I was denied. Every week I was denied for ten weeks.

Finally I sent back one denial letter with a request to close my applications according to the instructions on how to close an account on the Unemployment Department website, I had given up. Believe it, I received a letter telling me that my request to withdraw my application was denied!!! All the Unemployment Department knew how to say about anything was "Denied! Denied! Denied! I was nuts with these people by now and in tears, what Jerks!  This was my money!  My insurance against losing an income! I had payed all my life!

It was the same with Cal-Fresh food stamp program and with Cal-Works job and education assistance, ALWAYS greeting you with the "reading of your warnings" to avoid felony charges. Ten minutes of listening to insulting warnings that if you falsify anything or make any mistake leading to the imagining of a falsification even by accident, prison doors yawn for you! This always came directly after Hello . . .

For someone who has always worked and has never had to deal with these agencies, I was appauled. I had never comitted even a misdomenor crime in my life. I have never even been cited a ticket! But I was loudly warned before any other conversation or information could be passed that if I had any notion of comitting a crime, they were ready for me!

Interestingly, the Unemployment Department later tracked me down and told me to send them a copy of the letter I received from the Government claiming that Emergency Disaster Unemployment was now available in California and that they did not want this letter circulating. What happened was; when I could get no response from the Unemlpoyment Department, I contacted ".gov" for advice. Apparently they did not like me going over their heads to .gov and alerting others to this document.

They used restricted phone numbers (blocked) like the FBI, had no last names and no e-mail addresses, at least none they would give me. They had me fax them a copy of the document and I never heard from them again, they disappeared. Poof!

Even President Trump misspoke the name of the Town of Paradise and called it "Pleasure".  Nothing went well for Paradise.

So, there you have it.  Whatever you think can't happen, whoever you think can't let you down, will . . .

In the next post I will cover FEMA and that coniving campaigning Circus, big name donators whose donations mysteriously disappeared, and locals who manipulate and dominate the resources sent as donations. We still have to cover the looting, the PGE bankruptcy, the Presidents threat to Paradise and the odd name he called the town, "Pleasure", and so much more.

In the meantime in the month of May 2019, the flooding in the midwest and plains, the golf ball size hail, the tornadoes in Oklahoma, Texas and Missouri rage on . .

These posts will be weekly once I get a little more organized.  I am still using Starbucks to upload them.

According to my years of research, it's fairly certain that under any of the extremes in the current predictions that there will be climate catastrophe survivors. It is believed that in the worst case senerios there will be large and small patches of Humanity around the globe who survive. Some will live in less than primitive hand crafted technology situations, some just surviving off the land as best they can while others use the skill sets they already have to produce common technologies like electricity from dams and home made solar panels.

Satellites will survive, radios will survive, basic technologies will all survive, so it is just a matter of getting signals to transfer and move again. Some will patch through and allow for limited internet in those places that have survived better. What we need to understand is that our young people will use these skill sets, and not those of yester-year. That is not who they are.

Every young person has had a general education about solar and wind powered energy and most boys can make home made solar panels from raw materials before they ever leave high school. Building small motors and windmills are a snap for these kids already. Young techie types will get some sort of communications running again and electricians, telecommunications analysts, programmers and hackers will hook it all up.

Dental assistants, candy stripers, short wave radio hobbyists, mechanics, nurses, pharmacist assistants, lab techs are all in college now or already working. Those that survive well will still create modern civilization however they can from these skills they own.
 
Technology will not go completely down although these young people will rethink it and probably redesign it. They have big ideas and none of those are horse plows. With that said, this is not to say that those surviving in farm areas, "farmers", will not use older technologies again. But those are farmers.

Not everyone is a criminal immediately after a global disaster, either, as movies all portray. So chins up! There will be criminals as usual of course, but there will be good educated healthy minded people too. And these young people are already savvy and by no means weak.

My kids grew up with disaster preparedness and survival skills and will not faint when something happens. My youngest daughter has been very well taught and was there to pick me up through the smoke and emergency vehicle clogged highways when I evacuated from the Paradise Fire. I only had to check in with her after the evacuation and say "I'm here and ready", and she came alternate routes. She KNEW to come alternate routes and avoid the exodus and huge influx of first responder and service vehicles coming from every direction. She KNEW to keep my grandchild out of school due to the smoke falling down into the Sacramento Valley before the schools issued any such closure. She knew what to expect. She knew what to do. Even her flood evacuation gear is all up to date. Our kids get it.

November 8, 2019. Wake up! It's "DOOMSDAY".

At 8:30 AM my Mother called me on November 8, 2018 and said "Wake up we have a fire." I work 12 hour shifts and Thursdays were my day off and I've always slept in.  She knew I would be sleeping and would not see the smoke creeping into town.

I got up and shook off the sleep. I looked around the room and tried to remember my plan.  Within minutes I was grabbing ten heavy evacuation bags and putting them on the couch. A text came over my cell at 8:31 AM, "DUE TO THE FIRE IN THE AREA, AN EVACUATION ORDER HAS BEEN ISSUED FOR ZONES 2, 6, 7, AND 13. IF ASSISTANCE IS NEEDED IN EVACUATING PLEASE CALL 911.

I was "zone 4". Everyone in Paradise had a Fire Zone Map and these were handed out regularly and came in the mail. To avoid crowding the three routes out of town, "zones" would be called  to evacuate and you were to wait until your zone is called.  That was the plan. I called my Mother.

"Dad is getting gas in the motorhome", she said, "we are leaving, it looks bad over here." "Don't delay," she said, "get out now."  I said "ok" and hung up.  

The second text came at 8:43 AM : AN IMMEDIATE EVACUATION ORDER FOR ZONES 2,3,7,8,13,14 DUE YTO FIRE. (Yes, YTO was misspelled, it was sloppy, and scary, someone was in a hurry!) YOU ARE RECEIVING THIS MESSAGE BECAUSE YOU SHOULD EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY.

I put on my boots and threw my jacket on over my pajamas and began hefting the evacuation bags out into the street uphill to my car. I made seven trips. I grabbed all my cash, my laptop, scooped all my medicines (herbs), phones and chargers into one last plastic bag, shut off everything in the house, locked and bolted the door and plodded up the hill to my overstuffed car.

I had wrenched my back, re-injured an old injury, trying to get some of the bags into the back seat, my car was two door.  The door caught the winds and slammed me in the back while I was bent over. The pain shot down my leg and I remember I hardly cared. I was slipping into the zone . . . that mind space drawn and wide and hazed over. There were embers now, falling on my face and hair and the sky was black.  

I got into my car and pulled out onto the main street called "Skyway", it looked like midnight at barely nine in the morning. I called my Mom. "We are out onto the Skyway", she said. I estimated they were about fifteen cars behind me and cars were all lined up and moving slow. Something had burned my right eyelid, it must have been an ember. I was rubbing it and trying to drive in the increasing dark around me. People were starting to panic. Someone ran out onto the street in front of me trying to catch a dog. My right eye was watering. I texted my Mother. "I am about fifteen cars ahead of you, meet me at the Raleys parking lot at the "bottom of the hill" The "bottom of the hill" was the nickname for the next town closest to Paradise going down out of the foothills. "Chico".

The first stop light was harried. People trying to get "in" to Paradise were turned away by Policemen who were trying to wave two lanes through the intersection to get people "out". Cars were turning around in the intersection and heading back out of town. Someone pushed a car out in front of me as I tried to go through the intersection, it looked as if it wouldn't start and they had rolled it down a hill into the intersection, I slammed on my brakes. The car rolled by and the Police Officer was shouting and distressed, waving me impatiently through the intersection and quickly turning around to stop the incoming traffic to turn THEM around. I felt sorry for him. My eye was still watering.

It was black as night and the smell of burning wood was in my lungs by then, I could taste it. I drove thru the intersection, still creeping along slowly in traffic. I texted my Mom, "Where are you?" . . . nothing.  I kept driving.

No more evacuation notices ever came. Zone 4 was on their own, I guessed. We were on the far side of town, farthest away from the direction the fire came in. I knew it was bad, really bad.  I texted my Mom again, nothing. Finally a text came as I began the descent down the highway into the valley below, "We are at the intersection" she texted. I pulled over and stopped. I thought of going back after them. The intersection was crazy and by now it would be worse! But traffic was steadily going past me so I knew it was still moving and they were only about fifteen cars behind me and Police were turning all incoming traffic back. So, I pulled back into traffic and picked up speed down the mountain. My back hurt. My eye was still watering into the tissue I had plucked from the glove box.  

The entire landscape to the left was glowing orange. It was well past sunrise now, nine-ish. The entire countryside was on fire and headed toward us. That slow wide mental haze was deepening and I felt as if I were slowly slipping into a dream. I finally pulled into the Raleys parking lot at the bottom of the hill at ten after nine. I parked and got out, watching the highway for my elderly parents. After about fifteen minutes I saw them, he was driving the motorhome and she was driving the Chevy Tahoe behind him. A wave of relief washed over me and I had to sit down on a curb to collect my wits and wait for them to park.

They parked and I went over to them, hugged my Mother and went back to get my car and park it next to them before the parking lot filled up. They were settled in their motorhome with heat and comfort within minutes.

I am trained in Emergency Preparedness, I knew what to do next before the gathering crowd realized they were not going back into Paradise. I left my tablet with my Mother and asked her to watch it for news, but they already had their motorhome TV on.  I saw the scope of the fire on the TV. I took my purse and went across the huge parking lot to the store. I had plenty of cash on hand and I bought 8 gallons of water, easy to prepare foods for several days, milk, coffee, wet wipes, and two tracfone minutes cards for my tracfone. I pushed the heavy cart back to the motorhome and now the pain in my back and leg was getting louder in my brain. I said nothing to my parents. I unloaded everything into my parents motorhome as they sat glued to the TV, my mother wringing her hands. I worried about my Dad's heart. Congestive heart failure . . .  and he had had a rough year already.

I sat down with them and hooked up my tablet and logged onto a hotspot. The news was not good. Paradise was on fire. It was cold. I was cold, my mother was cold and she had wrapped in small blanket. The temperature had dropped radically. The blackened sky had actually dropped the temperature to quite cold in a very short time. It was a warm dry November just the day before, shorts and t-shirt weather. "Jackets and blankets", I thought. Mom had the motorhome set up for summer.

I left them to the TV. I went outside and watched the cars streaming down on the Skyway into Chico from Paradise. Suddenly I saw fire at an intersection behind us, a car was on fire. The people had pulled over and had gotten out. Fire trucks pulled up just as it began exploding into bigger flames. Traffic was askew around the vehicle. The hoses from the fire truck could not put out the flames and the engine exploded a couple more times, spitting up huge flames into the air before the firemen could get the flames down. I later learned that many cars caught on fire during the evacuation after they got out. Many more cars never made it out.

A friend walked past the window of motorhome and waved me to come out. I was delighted to see him. I smiled and waved. He is the son of the people who lived across the street from my parents home. As I walked closer to him I saw his expression and he grabbed me and said, "I need you to be strong." . . . I said, "Ok." He said that my parents house was gone, and his parents house too. He said his own house was gone and his daughters house as well. I was shocked. "So quickly?", I thought. He went with me to the motorhome and told my Dad and Mother.  

My mother collapsed and I caught her, as I was standing next to her, and sat her on the booth seat in their motorhome. She stared out, in shock.  My Dad thanked my friend and I stepped out of the motorhome to hug him as he left. He said he knew nothing about my place yet. He worked for the town, so he would let me know in the days to come but "Paradise is gone", he said. I worried about my Dad's heart holding up. My back hurt. I wept. This was the beginning of a long living hell for my parents, my friends, my family, myself and everyone I knew.

These are the days I dreaded for so many years. I thought of my grown children and the days of future disasters ahead. It was over a week before I found out that my home was destroyed too, but my rented office had survived.

I was prepared. My kids are prepared too. All they need is an acute sense of watchfulness and a little luck.  But most people are not prepared over the age of fifty, even if their kids are.  In general, more people are preparing since 2012 than ever before and I know that because I paid attention but still over half of the population of the United States will be too busy to deal with it and think their government will deal with it for them. Our government knew in the 1970's when they created FEMA. Tell me, what exactly CAN they do?  I can answer that one from the Paradise Camp Fire destruction zone.

The children who are raised in adaptive times of change will do well as adults as they have had to shift and manuever their whole lives to adjust to the changing landscapes. They will have watched grandparents and parents deal with different levels of climate challenges and will be sturdy and resilient in their minds if nothing else. Teach your children well.

Everyone, everywhere will have a societal collapse of some kind, loss of fiat, worthless money, food and water situations, disease complications, power grids up and down, etc... Many areas will not survive at all. People will have to rely on their skills and talents. We will not see the climate settle down anytime soon, our grandchildren may see a more predictable weather cycle, regardless of what it settles to be.  But that settled climate may not last either. At present, past 2050 is only speculation, so far.

From now until the earth quiets into a new climate, and now it seems a cold one, what do we have?

A line graph of escalating disasters around the globe... It will not slow down for at least fifteen years, maybe twenty.When it does, it will be a cold climate with the remaining Human species who survived to live in that new climate with new adaptations. Until then the key word here is "escalations". Possibly 20 years of continued escalations. Monthly and weekly.

For the next twenty years we live in an escalation senerio of continual disasters that will eventually touch your house in some way. By 2050, they say, it will be a different planet. So, we have a lot to do and a lot to get through in the next ten to twenty years.

Hard times for those with elderly parents. Their health can hardly manage the strain. We are talking 80 years of age and older. The shock completely overtakes them. They are reluctant to make sudden moves of any kind after a disaster. They spin in confusion of Insurance Company collapsures, piles of paperwork to fill out, lost documents, strange new emergency hospital rooms, unfamiliar overtaxed doctors, loss of meds, clothing, and direction.

In the first week, after the fire, people were looking for survivors and praying that they have lost no one they loved. My phone texted constantly for the first two days simply with people looking for me or myself looking for them. My Mother and I clasped hands and prayed for a friend of mine who was last seen alone in the street in Paradise, on foot, with her horse. I had not been able to find her. No one had seen nor heard from her. Within an hour she texted "Hardly have any battery left, I am ok!" This is how it goes the first 24 hours, at least, people do nothing but look for each other.

The lists of names of the missing begin to roll on the TV News by day three. Sorrow and mourning takes over everyone. It overwhelms nearby towns with evacuees trying to shelter. The elderly seem to pull out of this sorrow very slowly if they pull out at all. Even once they are secured and safe, set up in new living arrangements, they mourn. The tears never seem to end. It was all they had ever worked for and looked forward to, their retirement homes and beloved friends and neighbors. All gone. "Too old to start over", they said.

The elderly do not adapt well to change as they are settled into their old age and retirement "golden years". The elderly do not manage well at all unless they have always been of a mind of a changing global climate and the dangers that lurk around us. Most are not in that state of mind. Just make them comfortable and press on with what you need to do. Just love them and tell them it is ok now, everyone is safe. They will continue to mourn long after everyone else has dealt with the reality of it all. Continue to enforce that they were lucky and blessed to have survived so well when others did not. Keep them comfortable. That is all you can do.

Most adults will live their lives during the "Escalations". Adults presently 30 to 60 will ride out those escalations and the younger ones who survive will certainly adapt to a new climate lifestyle. Disease without medical care will take the highest death tolls in these times. There is no fudging the numbers here, many will not survive through the rapid spread of untreated disease, but those who do will live in a new climate reality, one they can learn to manage and adapt to.

Most analysts come up with the first immediate conclusion of society rolling backwards to a primitive state. Living like 15th century farmers with bully types attempting to run the show. I don't and never have seen it that way. Except for the usual bullies, that is.

Life during the escalations is where we focus today. That's us. That's now. I continue to remind my children that most of Humanity has lived through threatening times, wars, plagues, climate disruptions, pilgrimages, etc and that very little of the history of Humanity has been quiet. Challenge and struggle is all part of the deal. So to accept that the easy life is yours forever is foolish. If life gets hard, get hard with it. So in OUR time, these times of escalations, what are we facing?

People will continue to evacuate these event areas and move to a city or area that is not ruined. USUALLY one that is nearby. Then THOSE areas will face major distress from a massive and unplanned influx of population bearing down on their water, power, sewer, garbage, housing, internet, parking lots, parks, churches, convention centers, hospitals, grocery stores, emergency provisions, etc. of which NONE were built for a huge overnight growth explosion.

This is what has happened to Chico California, a population of 80,000. On November 8th, 2019, 30,000 people raced down a mountain into Chico California in less than 24 hours and half are still there five months later. The town swelled a third larger in population in 24 hours. Some have said it was more like 50,000 people, from Magailia, Concow and other surrounding areas that were also burned. One of the first functions of Chico's infrastructure to heave was the internet and everyone in the city cried that the internet had slowed to a crawl. Computer shops were packed with people trying to upgade their internet speed or buy faster modems. They turned the people away in succession, telling them that it was not the equipment, it was the "load" on Chico's internet systems.

A regular Friday Night Chico Public Radio Show aired into April an "After the Fire" radio program, interviewing Chico City Officials to tell the public what is being done to mitigate the situation. Chico is still straining under the weight five months later. Very little can be done for huge infrastructure adaptations in a small amount of time. It will take years to expand the city.

Then, a few weeks after the fire, parts of the outer Chico areas and small farm towns overloaded with trailers in their parks and parking lots flooded when the December rains came. People sheltering in RV's in parks near the Sacramento River had to be evacuated again in January! The Sacramento Valley is under increasing flood watches over the last ten years, February 2019 set a rain record. It is a bit of a chase around for everyone.

It's going to continue to be a chase around for everyone. Every time a city or town is evacuated the people have to go "somewhere" for weeks to months. Inevitably it is the next town nearby. And it's going to BE the next towns nearby until THEY have a disaster event or buckle under the strain. Then where?

And what about rebuilding? Can't people rebuild? On their own land? They still have their land don't they? Insurance money? Two local insurance companies in Paradise went bankrupt immediatelty.

By March, five months after the fire, the City of Paradise issued less than 10 building permits to rebuilders. There is no water. The water was tainted with benzene, a dangerous toxin released into the pipeline systems from melting plastic pipes and it will take two to three years to fully repair. The water company is broke now, using all of its resources for expensive experts and testing equipment and they have no customers. No income at all.

Some of the residents refuse to take the contamination seriously and if their sent-out water sample comes back clean, they will use their water anyway. "It's a dog and pony show, a way to make money" said one resident to me recently, "Stop hauling water if it hurts your back and accept that it is all just a big show, not nearly as bad as they say." These self-proclaimed "informed insiders" influence many people in their justifications to go against Town advisories. They will rally whole groups to disregard the warnings. Scary.

It's going to continue to be a chase around for everyone. Every time a city or town is evacuated the people have to go "somewhere" for weeks to months. Inevitably it is the next town nearby. And it's going to BE the next towns nearby until THEY have a disaster event or buckle under the strain. Then where?

And what about rebuilding? Can't people rebuild? On their own land? They still have their land don't they? Insurance money? Two local insurance companies in Paradise went bankrupt immediatelty.

By March, five months after the fire, the City of Paradise issued less than 10 building permits to rebuilders. There is no water. The water was tainted with benzene, a dangerous toxin released into the pipeline systems from melting plastic pipes and it will take two to three years to fully repair. The water company is broke now, using all of its resources for expensive experts and testing equipment and they have no customers. No income at all.

Some of the residents refuse to take the contamination seriously and if their sent-out water sample comes back clean, they will use their water anyway. "It's a dog and pony show, a way to make money" said one resident to me recently, "Stop hauling water if it hurts your back and accept that it is all just a big show, not nearly as bad as they say." These self-proclaimed "informed insiders" influence many people in their justifications to go against Town advisories. They will rally whole groups to disregard the warnings. Scary.

No one can rebuild without water. If they do, the government will not let them reside in a structure without clearance for safe water. Now, new pipes are required and new sprinklers in case of more fires. And who is going to insure these people?

The Paradise Water District is opting to put water tanks at any livable standing structure and fill it up regularly. THAT is what it comes down to for the next two to three years while the water system is being repaired.

Even if people could rebuild, all of their jobs burned down too. Most have no jobs now. Restaurants and buisnesses can not reopen without water. If they DID have good water, only ten percent of the town is standing. Who could get enough business to keep their doors open with less than ten percent of the original population?

Professors came from Berkley and from around the USA to advise Paradise Irrigation District (PID) and research the Paradise water system and made it clear to the Water Department and the remaining residents that this is unprecidented and no one knows how to repair damage like this with any speed or even assured accuracy. In other words, they have never had to deal with over 140 miles of melted pipes leaking deadly toxins into the system. Isolating the melted areas from good and usable pipes will take forever. Why? The fire destroyed 11,000 structures and 100,000 acres of land. It was said that it would take a military styled organization and crew to get through all of those pipes in any amount of time.  And the Water Departments budget for anything remotely considerable? Zero.

The residents who attended the first Paradise Irrigation District Community Meeting were hostile and impatient with the poor Utility Company. I am truly embarrassed to say how some of the residents behaved. So, THIS was expected too. Yes, after years of watching the aftermath of a disaster time and time again in my continual research, I noted well that citizens would begin to take out their frustrations on the service and utility companies. Hurricane Andrew, Hurricane Katrina, and several other large disasters had population anger problems.

The loudest of these hecklers and angry holstiles were in New York when the Bombogenisis storms took out their power all over the state for weeks. This disaster was no different and little Paradise had it's hostile residents telling off the haggard PID Managers in public view just like New York. Most of the Water Department's people had lost their homes too, and several workers had moved away already. Utility companies will bow and buckle under the pressures of the populations against them. It's a truly frightening disaster side effect to see. Paradise went up in flames in one day. Panic ruled the overall psychology. WE ALL need to be prepared for the anger and panic that overwhelms the people around us in a disaster event.

The most persistent disasters types will be:
 
FLOODS (disease runs rampant),
 
FIRES (although they will slow down as the temperatures drop  from polar vortex incident increases)

HURRICANES (increasing in size and frequency)
 
TORNADOES (increasing in size, number and frequency)
 
BLIZZARDS and more Nor-Easters (increasing in frequency)
 
INSECT INVASION )from continual destruction of farmland, flood, mold)
 
MONSOONS (increasing in intensity)

DUST STORMS (becoming regular now)

ICE FLOWS (moving with the force of bull dozers across inhabited areas)

DISEASE (due to contaminated water, air, land-born mold, infected medicine and food)

Winters will be longer, summers shorter. Eventually there will be no more FEMA workers coming around to clean up the mess. ALL of this was forewarned and all of it is happening. I KNOW it was all forewarned because I paid attention and took notes!

NONE of these threats are new to Humanity. We have never lived on a hospitable planet. Hostile weather has always been upon us and regular global climate change as well. Earth is not the Paradise we all think it is. It has its moments in history, but that is all, just moments. It is beautiful, primarily because it is hostile and it's beauty is carved by violent and potent forces we could never control. . . or defeat.

The planet is always in motion, plates shifting, earthquakes and volcanoes creating more rich soils, glaciers melting carving breath-taking cliffs and spectacular waterfalls across the mountain ranges that were formed by earth's massive plates crushing up against each other. CLIMATE IS ALWAYS IN MOTION. The movements of the planet are erratic, some quick and fairly regular, others snap fast seemingly out of nowhere, some huge, some small, some on land, some at sea. "She is alive".

Human lifespans do not allow a full view of this slow and sure movement as it actually is. An average lifetime doesn't see much movement unless it is at the beginning or the end of a large wave. A generation may know of a volcano, another generation may have been in an earthquake, another a drought and so on.  

So, geological movement has always been. To notice an increase in this movement as a 50 year escalation to changing climate and land forms is hard for Humans to put into perspective as they go about their busy busy lives on the streets that never change. The current escalation of natural disasters is a "wave" of the planets movement to a different climate.

Argue on as to the causes, it makes no matter to any of us. Earth has a history of a volatile, inhospitable, ever changing, land and sea and is not the Garden of Eden. It never was. And today Humanity is noticing a wave upon the earth when it is actually but "another" wave. There is no need to quote the History of Climate and Human Civilizations here, if one should doubt the obvious then one has to go and do that research and self educate him or her self. That is your own responsibility, you have no servants.

The first thing I learned was the most uplifting, everything was downhill after that. And that was this;

The most help outside of family, the kindest words, the first donations, the greatest of my survival came from strangers or people who barely knew me. And I watched this happening to all of us who came from the town that burned to the ground.

The "Heart of Humanity" was there immediately with food, blankets, water and open arms. But soon, well before the needs ran out, the donations and assistance slowed to a crawl. People have lives to live and have to get on with their own problems.

As I had noticed with all other disasters, we faded quickly from the media headlines. The disaster was not over, in fact it had just begun. We never hear what happened to the people in these disasters except for a follow up, maybe a year later, and then never again. Once you drop off the news headlines, you are forgotten. There is no way around this, people have to get on with their own lives and there are new disasters to report and cover.

So, you are truly on your own. Government help is not what you think it is. FEMA takes their money back from most victims, in one way or another, Salvation Army goes away, Shelters are eventually shut down and many people still have no where to go. What becomes of those people?

FEMA will probably cost you more than you will have imagined in the end as you are forced to take out low interest loans from the lender that they provide in order to receive ANY assistance from them at all. And then the assistance is only a "reduced cost" of services, nothing is free. Several people I know who took actual money from FEMA has already been asked to return all or a portion of it because they did not meet qualifications for some reason or another. Why did they give them the money if they did not meet the requirements in the first place?

If you hire a private contractor to clean and restore your property, FEMA will not guarantee that it will "sign off" that your property is legally certified as safe. You have to use the contractors provided by FEMA or risk failing inspection. It's a racket, like everything else.

So far, it seems people are cleaning their properties (they HAVE to) when FEMA can get to it and then just letting it sit there.  They can't start rebuilding without water. They HAD to take out loans. They have to buy water tanks or wait for the Water Department to supply one in the next year or two, they are living on their insurance money somewhere else and their funds are dwindling. They have had to pay FEMA already to clear the land and pass inspection, pay to have the water tested that will not yet pass the Water Departments approval, pay to put in new non toxic water pipes on their property, pay for new water meters, pay for more water sprinklers, pay increased fire insurance and on and on.  All this while renting a house or room somewhere else and traveling back and forth. Some don't even have jobs anymore.

The government can't help you. What can they do? FEMA is not what you have imagined. Presidents can refuse to give you emergency grants for your town's infrastructure, or at least threaten to refuse, as we have all openly wittnessed as the President threatened to withhold Disaster Funds from Butte County. Certainly as these disasters continue to escalate, the Presidents WILL refuse. How many disasters did the government send money to just in 2018? "Fourteen" that were over a billion dollars in damages. Then there are smaller ones.

We are going to run out of disaster funds people. This can't continue. Even if they would (and they won't) FEMA and the government can't fix this. They know it. Since the Nov. 8th 2018 fire alone, there have been several more massive disasters in the US. We had two bombogenisis in January 2019, three multistate floods, two polar vortex events dropping temperatures to 60 below zero!, and Hurricane Michael wiping out an entire coastal town in late 2018.

On an average of every two weeks now there is another severe disaster somewhere in the US. Major disasters are up to eight to fifteen a year now. This isn't going to go away. AND if you think it's over for you because you have already had a disaster strike your area and town, read about people who are sick of reccuring disasters. How we get through these is what I am all about, NOT whether or not there will be more, that part is obvious.

It will be two years yet before recovery for many. Paradise will not fully recover for ten years. That is IF there is NOT another disaster, a damaging windstorm, flash flooding, another fire.  

The next post will cover the weeks holding out in shelters.  For myself it was the luxury of my daughters home in downtown Sacramento, where I cried the most over the treatment I received from agencies who are to deal with such events, like the Unemployment Office, the DMV, FEMA, CALWORKS, tricks, lies, scams and media black outs. Also we will cover the loss of employment. Once you have no job, your status as a citizen changes in the blink of an eye. It doesn't matter how you lost that job, by fire or disaster, you are now a lowly beggar. And treated like one.

Laura Gannon
DisasterAge
Paradise Lost

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                     THE INTRODUCTION POST IS DIRECTLY BELOW THIS POST, that is where the story begins . . .

It's fairly certain that there will be climate catastrophe survivors. It is believed that in the worst case senerios there will be large and small patches of humanity around the globe who survive and live in primitive hand crafted technology situations, some just surviving off the land, while others use what their skill sets can produce of common technologies like electricity from dams and building home made solar panels, etc. Satellites will survive, radios will survive, basic technologies will survive so just getting signals to transfer and move again will allow for a limited internet in those places that have survived better. What we need to understand is that our young people will use the skill sets they know and not those of yesteryear, long before their grandparents time.

Every young person has had a general education about solar and wind powered energy and most boys can make home made solar panels from raw materials before they ever leave high school. Building small motors and windmills is a snap for these kids already. Techy types will get communications running again, programmers and hackers will hook it all up. Dental assistants, candy stripers, short wave radio hobbyists, mechanics, nurses, pharmacist assistants, lab techs are all in college now. These are very brainy kids these days and very few are criminal minds. So chins up! There will be criminals as usual, but there will be good educated healthy minded people too. And these young people are already savvy and by no means weak. My kids grew up with disaster preparedness and survival skills and will not faint when something happens.

At 8:30 AM my mother called me on November 8, 2018 and said "Wake up we have a fire." I work 12 hour shifts and Thursdays were my day off and I always slept in.  She knew I would be sleeping and would not see the smoke creeping into the town.

I got up and shook off the sleep.  I looked around the room and tried to remember my plan.  Within minutes I was grabbing ten heavy evacuation bags and putting them on the couch. A text came over my cell at 8:31 AM, "DUE TO THE FIRE IN THE AREA, AN EVACUATION ORDER HAS BEEN ISSUED FOR ZONES 2, 6, 7, AND 13. IF ASSISTANCE IS NEEDED IN EVACUATING PLEASE CALL 911.

I was "zone 4". Everyone in Paradise had a fire zone map and these were handed out regularly and came in the mail. To avoid crowding the three routes out of town, zones would be called and you were to wait until your zone is called.  That was the plan. I called my mother.

"Dad is getting gas in the motorhome", she said, "we are leaving, it looks bad over here." "Don't delay," she said, "get out now."  I said "ok" and hung up.  

The second text came at 8:43 AM : AN IMMEDIATE EVACUATION ORDER FOR ZONES 2,3,7,8,13,14 DUE YTO FIRE. (Yes, YTO was misspelled, it was sloppy, and scary, someone was in a hurry!) YOU ARE RECEIVING THIS MESSAGE BECAUSE YOU SHOULD EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY.

I put on my boots and threw my jacket on over my pajamas and began hefting the huge evacuation bags out into the street uphill to my car. I made seven trips.  I grabbed all my cash, my laptop, scooped all my medicines (herbs), phones and chargers into one last plastic bag, shut off everything in the house, locked and bolted the door and plodded up the hill to my overstuffed car.

I had wretched my back, re-injured an old injury, trying to get some of the bags into the back seat, my car was two door.  The pain shot down my leg and I hardly cared.  There were embers now, falling on my face and hair and the sky was black.  I got in and pulled out onto the main street, it looked like midnight at barely nine in the morning. I called my mom, "We are out onto the Skyway", she said. I estimated they were about fifteen cars behind me and the cars were all lined up and moving slow. Something had burned my right eyelid, it must have been an ember.  I was rubbing it and trying to drive in the increasing dark.  People were starting to panic.  People were running out into the street trying to catch a dog. I texted my mother. "I am about fifteen cars ahead of you, meet you at the Raleys parking lot at the bottom of the hill" (Chico).

The first stoplight was harried.  People were being turned away trying to get into Paradise by Police Officers and they were trying to wave two lanes at the intersection thru to get out. Cars were turning around in the street and heading back out of town.  Someone pushed a car out in front of me as I tried to go thru the intersection, it looked as if it wouldn't start and they had rolled it down a hill into the intersection, I slammed on my brakes.  It rolled by and the Police Officer was shouting and distressed, waving me through the intersection and turning to stop the incoming traffic and continue to turn them around.  It was black as night and the smell of burning wood was in my lungs by then. I drove thru the intersection, still creeping along slowly in traffic.  I texted my mom, "Where are you?" . . . nothing.  I kept driving.

No more evacuation notices ever came.  Zone 4 was on their own, I guessed. We were on the far side of town, farthest away from the direction the fire came in.  I knew it was bad, really bad.  I texted my mom again, nothing. Finally a text came as I began the descent down the highway into the valley below, "We are at the intersection." I pulled over. I though of going back after them. The intersection was crazy . . . by now it would be worse but traffic was going past me so I knew it was still moving and they were only about fifteen cars behind me and they were turning incoming traffic back.  So, I pulled back into traffic and picked up speed down the mountain.

The entire landscape to the left was glowing orange. It was well past sunrise now, Nine-ish. The entire countryside was on fire and headed toward us.  I finally pulled into the Raleys parking lot at the bottom of the hill at ten after nine.  I parked and got out, watching the highway for my elderly parents. After about fifteen minutes I saw them, he was driving the motorhome and she was driving the Tahoe behind him. A wave of relief washed over me and I had to sit down on a curb and wait for them to park.

They parked and I went over to them, hugged my mother and went back to get my car and park it next to them before the parking lot filled up.

I am trained in emergency preparedness, I knew what to do next before the crowds realized they were not going back into Paradise. I left my tablet with my mother and asked her to watch it for news, but they already had their motorhome TV on.  I saw the scope of the fire on the TV. I took my purse and went across the huge parking lot to the store. I had plenty of cash on hand and I bought 8 gallons of water, easy to prepare foods for several days, milk, coffee, wet wipes, and two tracfone minutes cards for my tracfone.  I pushed the heavy cart back to the motorhome and now the pain in my back and leg was getting louder in my brain. I said nothing to my parents. I unloaded everything into my parents motorhome as they sat glued to the TV, my mother wringing her hands. I worried about my dad's heart.  Congestive heart failure . . .  and he had had a rough year.

I sat down with them and hooked up my tablet and logged onto a hotspot.  The news was not good.  Paradise was on fire. It was cold. I was cold, my mother was cold. The temperature had dropped radically. The blackened sky had actually dropped the temperature to cold. It was a warm dry November just the day before. Jackets and blankets, I thought. Mom had the motorhome set up for summer. Great.

I left them to the TV. I went outside and watched the cars streaming down on the highway into Chico from Paradise. Suddenly I saw fire at an intersection behind us, a car was on fire. The people had pulled over and gotten out.  Fire trucks pulled up just as it began exploding into bigger flames.  Traffic was askew around the vehicle. The hoses from the fire truck could not put out the flames and the engine exploded a couple more times, spitting up huge flames into the air before the firemen could get the flames down. I later learned that many cars caught on fire during the evacuation after they got out.  Many more cars never made it out.

My friend walked past the motorhome and waved me over. I was delighted to see him. I smiled and waved. He is the son of the people who lived across the street from my parents home. As I walked closer to him I saw his expression and he grabbed me and said, "I need you to be strong." . . . I said, "Ok." He said that my parents house was gone, and his parents house too. He said his own house was gone and his daughters house as well. I was in shock. "So quickly?", I thought. He went with me to the motorhome and told my Dad and Mother.  

My mother collapsed and I caught her, as I was standing next to her, and sat her on the booth seat in their motorhome. She stared out, in shock.  My Dad thanked my friend and I stepped out of the motorhome to hug him as he left. He said he knew nothing about my place yet. He worked for the town, so he would let me know in the days to come but "Paradise is gone", he said. I worried about my Dad's heart holding up. My back hurt. I wept. This was the beginning of a long living hell for my parents, my friends, my family, myself and everyone I knew.

These are the days I dreaded for so many years. I thought of my grown children and the days of future disasters ahead. It was over a week before I found out that my home was destroyed too, but my office had survived.

I was prepared. My kids are prepared too. All they need is an acute sense of watchfulness and a little luck.  But most people are not prepared over the age of fifty, even if their kids are.  In general, more people are preparing since 2012 than ever before and I know that because I paid attention but still over half of the population of the United States will be too busy to deal with it and think their government is going to deal with it. Our government knew in the 1970's when they created FEMA. Tell me, what exactly CAN they do?  I can answer that one from the Paradise Camp Fire destruction zone.

The children who are raised in adaptive times of change will do well as adults as they have had to shift and manuever their whole lives to adjust to the changing landscapes. They will have watched grandparents and parents deal with different levels of climate challenges and will be sturdy and resilient in their minds if nothing else. Teach your children well.

Everyone everywhere will have a societal collapse of some kind, loss of fiat, worthless money, food and water situations, disease complications, power grids up and down, etc.... Most areas will not survive at all. People will have to rely on their skills and talents.

From now until the earth quiets into a new climate, and now it seems a cold one, what do we have?

A line graph of escalating disasters around the globe....

It will not slow down for at least fifteen years, maybe twenty. When it does, it will be a cold climate with the remaining human species who survived to live in that new climate with new adaptations. Until then the key work here is "escalations".

This is a good and hopeful senerio for humanity considering what it is facing and enduring today. So, we will leave that there.

In the meantime, for the next twenty years we live in an escalation senerio of continual disasters. By 2050 it will be a different planet. We have a lot to do and a lot to get through in the next ten years.

Most adults will live their lives during the escalation. Adults presently 30 to 60 will ride the escalation and the younger ones who survive may adapt to a new climate lifestyle.  Disease without medical care will take the highest death tolls. There is no fudging the numbers here, many will not survive, but those who do will live in a new reality, one they can learn to manage and adapt to.

Most analysts come up with the first immediate conclusion of society rolling backwards to a primitive state.  Living like 15th century farmers with bully types attempting to run the show . . . again. I don't and never have seen it that way.

Life during the escalations is where we focus today. That's us. That's now.

People will continue to evacuate these event areas and move to a city or area that is not ruined. USUALLY one that is nearby. Then THOSE areas will face major distress from a massive and unplanned influx of population bearing down on their water, power, sewer, garbage, housing, internet, parking lots, parks, churches, convention centers, hospitals, etc. of which none were built for a huge overnight growth explosion.

This is what has happened to Chico California, a population of 80,000. November 8th, 2019, 30,000 people raced down a mountain into Chico California in 24 hours and half are still there five months later. The town swelled a third larger in population in 24 hours.

A regular Friday Night Public Radio station aired into April an "After the Fire" program interviewing Chico City Officials to tell the public what is being done to mitigate the situation. Chico is still heaving under the strain five months later.

Then parts of the outer Chico areas and small farm towns overloaded with trailers in their parks and parking lots flooded when the December rains came. People sheltering in RV's in parks near the Sacramento River had to be evacuated again in January! The Sacramento Valley is under increasing flood watches over the last ten years, February 2019 set a record. It is a bit of a chase around for everyone.

It's going to continue to be a chase around for everyone. Every time a city or town is evacuated the people have to go somewhere for weeks to months. Inevitably it is the next town nearby. And it's going to BE the next towns nearby until THEY have a disaster event or buckle under the strain.  Then where?

And what about rebuilding? Can't people rebuild? On their own land? They still have their land don't they? Insurance money? Two local insurance companies in Paradise went bankrupt immediatelty.

By March, five months after the fire, the City of Paradise issued less than 10 building permits to rebuilders. There is no water.  The water was tainted with benzene, a dangerous toxin released into the pipeline systems from melting plastic pipes and it will take two to three years to fully repair.  The water company is broke now, using all of its resources for expensive experts and testing equipment and they have no customers.  No income at all.

I still drive the town at least once a week. I still look for familiar faces. Most have already moved away. My Parents found housing near Sacramento as they could find nothing closer. Everything was sold or rented already within days. There is no one here anymore that I know. One friend, the one whose parents lived across the street from my parents is still working here and cleaning off his property but he bought another house already in Magalia. He won't rebuild either. Other than he, there is no one left that I know. And no jobs. Starbucks hired all young kids from the College Town down in the valley.  My one friend reported to me yesterday that Triple AAA towing is available in Paradise now. My new (used) car is acting up already. He said that one Repair Shop has two bays open in the storage building out behind their burned business. I made an appointment. There was not much on his schedule. So, scant and carefully I go along.  But there will be a new and better town soon, right?

No one can rebuild without water. If they do, the government will not let them reside in a structure without clearance for safe water. Now new pipes are required and sprinklers in case of more fire. And who is going to insure these people?

The Paradise Water District is opting to put water tanks at any livable standing structure and fill it up regularly. THAT is what it comes down to for the next two to three years while the water system is being repaired.

Even if people could rebuild, all of their jobs burned down too. Most have no jobs now. Restaurants and business's can not reopen without water. If they had good water, only ten percent of the town is standing. Who could get enough business to keep their doors open with less than ten percent of the original population?

Professors came from around the USA to advise Paradise Irrigation District (PID) and research the Paradise water system and made it clear to the Water Department and the remaining residents that this is unprecidented and no one knows how to repair damage like this with any speed or even assured accuracy. In other words, they have never had to deal with over 140 miles of melted pipes leaking deadly toxins into the system. Isolating the melted areas from good and usable pipes will take forever. Why? The fire destroyed 11,000 structures and 100,000 acres of land. It was said that it would take a military styled organization and crew to get through all of those pipes in any amount of time.  And the Water Departments budget for anything remotely considerable?

The residents who attended the first Paradise Irrigation District Community Meeting were hostile and impatient with the poor utility. I am truly embarrassed to say how some of the residents behaved. So, THIS was expected too.  Yes, after years of watching the aftermath of a disaster time and time again in my continual research, I noted well that citizens would begin to take out their frustration on the service and utility companies. The loudest of these hecklers and angry holstiles was in New York when the Bombogenisis storms took out their power all over the state for weeks. This disaster was no different and little Paradise had it's hostile residents telling off the haggard PID department in public just like New York. Most of the Water Departments people had lost their homes too, and several workers had moved away already. Utility companies will heave and buckle under the pressures of the populations against them. It's truly frightening to see.

The most persistent disasters will be, floods (disease runs rampant), Fires (although they will slow down as the temperatures drop from polar vortex incident increases), hurricanes (increasing in size and frequency), tornadoes (increasing in size, number and frequency), blizzards and more nor-easters (more every year), continual destruction of farmland (flood, tornado, blizzard, insect plague, mold), monsoons (increase of intensity), dust storms (becoming regular), and ice flows (moving with the force of bull dozers across inhabited areas). Winters will be longer, summers shorter. Eventually there will be no more FEMA workers coming around to clean up the mess. ALL of this was forewarned and all of it is happening. I KNOW it was all forewarned because I paid attention and took notes!

NONE of these weather threats are new to humanity. We have never lived on a hospitable planet. Hostile weather has always been upon us and regular global climate changes as well.  Earth is not the Paradise we all think it is.  It has its moments in history, but that is all, just moments. It is beautiful, primarily because it is hostile and it's beauty is carved by violent and potent forces we could never control. . . or defeat.

The planet is always in motion, plates shifting, earthquakes, volcanoes creating more rich soils, glaciers melting carving breath-taking cliffs and spectacular waterfalls across the mountain ranges that were formed by earth's massive plates crushing up against each other. CLIMATE IS ALWAYS IN MOTION. The movements of the planet are erratic, some quick and fairly regular, others snap fast seemingly out of nowhere, some huge, some small, some on land, some at sea. "She is alive".

Human lifespans do not allow a view of this slow and sure movement as it actually is. An average lifetime doesn't see much movement unless it is at the beginning or the end of one. A generation may know of a volcano, another generation may have been in earthquake, another a drought and so on.  

So, geological movement has always been. To notice an increase in this movement as a 50 year escalation to changing climate and land forms is hard for humans to put into perspective as they go about their busy busy lives on the streets that never change. The current escalation of natural disasters is a "wave" of the planets movement to a different climate.

Argue on as to the causes, it makes no matter to any of us. Earth has a history of a volatile and inhospitable, ever changing land and sea and is not the Garden of Eden. It never was. And today humanity is noticing a wave upon the earth when it is actually but "another" wave. There is no need to quote the history of climate and human civilizations here, if one should doubt the obvious then one has to go and do that research and self educate him or her self. That is your own responsibility, you have no servants.

The first thing I learned was the most uplifting, everything was downhill after that. And that was this;

The most help outside of family, the kindest words, the first donations, the greatest of my survival came from strangers or people who barely knew me. And I watched this happening to all of us who came from the town that burned to the ground in the first few weeks.

The "Heart of Humanity" was there immediately with food, blankets, water and open arms. But soon, well before the needs ran out, the donations and assistance slowed to a crawl.  People have lives to live and have to get on with their own problems.

As I had noticed with all other disasters, we faded quickly from the media headlines. The disaster was not over, in fact it had just begun. We never hear what happened to the people in these disasters except for a follow up, maybe a year later, and then never again. Once you drop off the news headlines, you are forgotten. There is no way around this, people have to get on with their own lives and there are new disasters to report and cover. So, you are truly on your own. Government help is not what you think it is. Salvation Army goes away. Shelters are eventually shut down and many people still have no where to go. What becomes of those people?

FEMA will probably cost you more than you will have imagined in the end as you are forced to take out low interest loans from the lender that they provide in order to receive ANY assistance from them at all. And then the assistance is only a "reduced cost" of services, nothing is free. If you hire a private contractor to clean and restore your property, FEMA will not guarantee that it will "sign off" that your property is legally certified as safe. It's a racket, like everything else.

So far, it seems people are cleaning their properties (they HAVE to) when FEMA can get to it and then just letting it sit there.  They can't start rebuilding without water. They HAD to take out loans. They have to buy water tanks or wait for the Water Department to supply one in the next year or two, they are living on their insurance money somewhere else and their funds are dwindling. They have had to pay FEMA already to clear the land and pass inspection, pay to have the water tested that will not yet pass the Water Departments approval, pay to put in new non toxic water pipes on their property, pay for new water meters, pay increased fire insurance and on and on.  All this while renting a house or room somewhere else and traveling back and forth. Some don't even have jobs anymore.

The government can't help you. What can they do? FEMA is not what you have imagined. Presidents can refuse to give you emergency grants for your town's infrastructure, or at least threaten to refuse, as we have all openly witnessed. Certainly as these disasters continue to escalate, the Presidents WILL refuse. How many disasters did the government send money to just in 2018? "Fourteen" that were over a billion dollars in damages. Then there are smaller ones.

In 1978 thru 1997 the economic cost of disasters was up to $895 billion dollars. Since then to the present it has shot up to $2.25 trillion! These are not imaginary numbers, I know! I paid attention. 2018 had 15 billion dollar disasters, 2017 had 17 billion dollar disasters, 2016 had 15 billion dollar disasters, 2015 had 10 billion dollar disasters.

We are going to run out of disaster funds people. This can't continue. Even if they would (and they won't) FEMA and the Government can't fix this. They know it.

 I will continue to write what I have learned in this blog. So much happened or didn't happen in the weeks after the fire. It's now five months on . . . another grocery store opened and three pharmacies, but there are no doctors, no dentists to write prescriptions for residents that are not there anymore and yet three pharmacies are open. Why? Because the building survived and no one knows what is going to happen to Paradise from here. No one. So, people go on as they were for lack of any other choice. There are no lines at the pharmacies, no lines at the grocery store, no lines anymore at the post office. The only lines are at Starbucks, who has wifi.

At this time Paradise has maybe 400 residents, at the most and the power stays on. There are no landlines still so I will go to Starbucks tomorrow and upload this blog post and call my mother.

The next post will cover the weeks holding out in shelters.  For myself it was the luxury of my daughters home in downtown Sacramento, where I cried the most over the treatment I received from agencies who are to deal with such events, like the unemployment office, the DMV, FEMA, emergency trailers, tricks, lies, scams and media black outs. Also we will cover the loss of employment. Once you have no job, your status as a citizen changes in the blink of an eye. It doesn't matter how you lost that job, by fire or disaster, you are now a lowly beggar.  And treated like one.

Laura Gannon
Paradise Lost

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THERE WERE MANY DELAYS IN UPLOADING THE FOLLOWING POSTS DUE TO THE EXTREME DIFFICULTIES WITH INTERNET IN PARADISE CALIFORNIA AFTER THE MEGA-FIRE, consequently several posts will be uploaded at the same time, in consecutive order of timelines.

So, I am a long time climate researcher and disaster preparedness advocate who survived the massive and record breaking California "Camp Fire" in Paradise, Magalia and Concow here in the West Sierra Foothills. I have more to say now, after this long and wearing experience, than I ever have before. These posts will be long.

After a major disaster, things will not be as most prepper's imagine. I'm a lifelong prepper, so I realize this now.

The first surprising notes lists something like this:

* Internet cafe's will be up and temporary cell towers will follow the contracted workers around who will be cleaning up the mess... as long as they are in town that is.

* Most survivors will NOT revert to 15th Century technology and live without electricity and modern invention.

* People who were not victims of the disaster will come from miles around to line up at the donations centers.  Returning frequently,they will take more goods than they can possibly use . . . and sell them.

* Taco Trucks will be the new industry in your area. It might be wise to invest in one now. And for the doomsdayers, this even applies to a global near extinction event as well, it seems there are hundreds of these, privately owned, ready to up and head out to disaster areas. It's a business kind of "on the side" of Carnivals and County Fairs.

* People simply are not what they were centuries ago and can not revert to a way of life they never lived. People will live like they have lived and have been educated and trained to live. Government relief will probably not apply to you. Funny how it applied to so few who were qualified.  Who knew you would have to qualify? And there's more . . . so much more I have learned.

Five months after the devastating "Camp Fire" leveled the entire town of Paradise California, population 27,000 plus outlying areas, I now live in my 3 room office that survived the fire, remodeled into an apartment. I lost my home. I lost my storage unit. I lost my job. My car was damaged in the fire. I got a puny $500 trade in value for a Voltswagon New Beetle Convertable of which the canvas top had burn holes that leaked water to a half inch on the floor for week. My friends and family lost everything and moved away.

I survived well compared to 90% of my town and remain in Paradise. Those five months reeled us all into sorrow, frustration, neglect, abandon, struggle, sickness and injury and continual daily hardship, no matter WHERE you were sheltered.

I was finally allowed to return to my property a week before Christmas but I waited until after the Holiday with my children to return. Life is different now. It is like changing the TV program to a different channel, you are still here, but in a completely different life and a completely different place.

The fire was on November 8th and 27,000 to 30,000 people were all evacuated at once. I evacuated at 8:30 A.M., leaving an unmade bed, work clothes from the night before laying on the end table and my work shoes in the middle of the bedroom floor. A simple scene from any Americans average life. Seven weeks later I pulled back into a nearly flattened, blackened ash town. Unrecognizable. I drove around the dead town twice a week looking for remaining residents out and about or surviving businesses that would reopen. I talked to people when I could find any to talk to.

THIS is a prime example of how people are treated after a disaster. There is little respect or regard for you or your situation. Strange blank faced officials from every corner of the state and larger government start crawling all over you and very few are adept in public relations. Your small privacies are invaded over and over again. Their well prepared campaigns to hound you to do as they advise never ceases and they are verbally aggressive. Victims begin to become hostile and irritated with their presence and their treatment.  Much more on that later.

Two days before New Years I settled into a dark town, no street lights or any lights at all at night. There were no midnight gunshots, no bells and whistles, no hooting and hollaring at midnight on New Years Eve. Just dark and cold silence.

FEMA workers had set up their tent camps all around the ruined town.  They came and went continually and gathered at the Taco Trucks for lunch every day in the grocery stores parking lots that had survived.  Cal Fire had used these lots as staging areas during the fire.

There was no "common" movement of life. There were no insects. Every day that it did not rain I looked for any sign of life.  No birds, no animals and no insects for weeks.

The water was poisoned.  There was one gas station and one grocery store running off a water tank that was filled daily. Some street lights began to partially come back on.  Starbucks opened.

After a couple more weeks a Dollar General Store opened and I could get candles.  The power was off and on during the winter storms. One donation center was opened in Old Magalia at a church, it had water, toilet paper, diapers, clothing and some food. Unusual things happened at this donation center, but more on that later. This center served mostly Magalia of which was nearly half burned.  There was nothing in Paradise for anyone there. It stayed this way for weeks on.  The one gas station was eventually robbed.

The largest church with convention rooms and a huge parking lot offered nothing to the survivors still in Paradise. FEMA and workers hired by FEMA would park there and use the lot from time to time. The Water Department had cases of bottled water three days a week available that you could drive over to their office and pick them up, if you could lift them out of your car and heave them into your home. I was injured in the evacuation. Or re-injured an old injury I should say, two lower lumbar compressed discs in my back. To lift and carry the cases of water was the worst of the hardships for me.

On second thought, it was cleaning the refrigerator that had sat without power for six weeks, that was, in true fact, the biggest hardship for me.  I had just been shopping prior to the fire.  It was disgusting.  I washed it repeatedly with vinegar to kill the smell and it lingered for weeks in the office.  It was a new smaller size refrigerator I used when I stayed overnight at the office working. I now know, that if I ever again evacuate my home, I will throw everything out of the freezer and fridge into a garbage bag and take it with me, regardless of what I do with it from there! I had to wear a mask, gloves and goggles to clean it and I gagged the whole time, so write this one down.

 Most of my life I carefully hid away my research and study of the scares of a dangerously changing planet.  Often I doubted my own research results under the pressure of friends and family who did not care for my interests nor conversation regarding the topic.  And that is putting it politely.  After a time, I simply went quiet and continued my data collections secretly.

Twenty five years ago there was little proof available to the public of any such "earth changes" occurring and the most I could rely on was roughly put into dooms-dayers magazines excerpted from true scientific papers and sparse bits from Universities and fleeting warnings from scientists.  The first of these came out rather quietly even though the scientists themselves were shouting.  I noticed this tentative panic.  I took the warning seriously.

It was in the year 1992.  Warnings from a collection of scientists speaking at the World Summit meeting had announced that the planet was facing severe consequences from greenhouse gasses and climate and geological reactions were expected that would be a danger to humanity.  

The announcement was dire and I was young but took it straight to heart immediately. I began my own research into the validity of their statements the very next day.  I was living in Oregon at the time.  I had no internet, no cell phone, it was 1995.  I went to the library.  I read anything I could find on the history of earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, volcanoes, etc.  I bought books.  I bought cassettes.  I bought maps and graphs and I hand charted those histories with dates and times on my own.  I bought books from mail book clubs and anything else I could get my hands on and I could see an escalation of natural geological events.  It wasn't drastic, but it was there.

I never stopped. Every year there was something more being published, another bizarre weather anomaly in some remote country. I continued to dig for hidden science papers, media hushed speeches and followed up on shunned environmental professors. Eventually I noticed an undeniable increase of escalation in the events the scientists had spoken of.  It was true.

What was the most perplexing was the notion that the media was not fully backing the data and qualified reports.  Later it became alarming to me that people were deliberately being ridiculed in public for speaking about the climate threats looming ahead. I think THAT is when I really got scared.

After the Y2K scare in the year 2000 was over, the rumblings of these scientific warnings began to get louder.  I paid attention.  I quietly aligned to the "Don't be scared, be prepared" movement and had emergency preparations always in order.  It was costly and time consuming and I had to hide that too.

Then the open arguments came as this topic began to nag at mainstream media. We all know about those arguments. Remember? Unending and monotonous denials.  Then in 2005 TIME magazine released an issue with Polar Bears on melting ice bergs on the cover and it said "Be Worried, be very worried", "Global Warming is Real".   I was elated! And quite confused at how I could be so happy over something so dire and frightening.  I even felt guilty, confused.

I thought about that day several times since the Paradise Fire.  I still think about it.

When that March 26, 2006 issue of TIME came out, I was elated because I was not wrong when I continued to believe in my own research and knew the planets climate was changing and that we were all in trouble in the immediate future.  I had spent years all alone studying the evidence and hiding it from co-workers and friends.

In my passionate and younger days I had taken quite a load of guff and much painful shunning for my research and interests in the controversial climate threats that eventually were arguments among all families, friends and countries.  It was handled and haggled like a politic and not an environmental problem. I continued to watch as the two merged into a messy and bitter clumsy marriage. I was elated because now my loved ones and neighbors would prepare!  We would all be on the same page and stronger for it.  Nope . . .  That never happened.

All the while the escalation of larger and larger climate and weather events continued. Finally the world accepted the obvious and climate change awareness was a common household concern.  I watched weekly and kept notes.  I watched people very carefully and quietly too. Most were still aggressively in denial. So my life continued in this way for many years.  Now and then a fire threat would creep up or down the mountain but never came into town.  

Paradise has always expected a bad fire event.  Not because of climate change but because of the limited ways to get out of the forested foothill town should their be an evacuation and because there had been regular small fires in the past.  In the last ten years, even the Paradise Fire Chief made it clear that it was no longer a matter of "if" but a matter of "when" and the town worked on evacuation plans for several years before that fateful day came.

Then whallah! The feared climate bomb explodes in my town, my life, my street, my house, my family, my job, my neighbors, my friends . . . I live thru a huge natural climate disaster that destroys my entire town. What did I know?  Was I prepared?  What did I learn?

I am personally very proud of how this small town handled that excruciating day. Only three main roads out and 27,000 people made it in about 15 hours with everything in sight on fire around them everywhere they turned.  We lost only 83 people, two of which were my personal friends. We should have lost hundreds.  

I am still amazed at the people of Paradise and their local emergency teams. Some will say it was strange luck, it doesn't matter. Everyone in Paradise California was on the constant lookout for fires in 2019.   And winds.

It was another long, hot dry summer and no rain had touched ground by November, when the late autumn winds would come.  The ferocity and speed of these winds had changed over the years and I charted all of that in my journals as usual. The winds came earlier, before there was a lot of precipitation to wet the forests. They were stronger every year. We lost several people in Paradise due to tree falls onto their homes or cars during unusually high wind events in the last five years.  I wrote it all down.

I was in several of those wind events, having one Pine Beetle infested tree fall onto my parents empty mobile home on a rental property of theirs, cutting the mobile home in half like a piece of toast and smashing the roof on their motor-home that was parked on the other side of the mobile.   A wind event . . . Another fell killing several people in town two years later, trees were down all over town.  A wind event . . . Another fell a year later in front of my parents house where I was staying the night seemingly safer from the howling winds than in my own mobile and the tip top of that tree fell on my car!   A wind event . . .

Trees falling in the winter forest was nothing new.  But many trees were sick and many had the pine beetle infestation due to drought and more were falling in drier seasons and with higher winds as the jet streams wobbled over the West just as predicted by climate scientists.  You see, we have BEEN in climate chaos for quite some years now.

After the record breaking Paradise Fire that staggered the world over in the news, Starbucks was one of the first businesses to be up and running again in a town that had few survivors and a mere tiny handful of businesses left.

Amazing . . . . starbucks is standing and up and running with wifi, all their own, no one else in town has wifi still. There was no horse plow waiting to plant the food in spring . . . there was Starbucks.

So, what is going to happen during this ramp up of climate change at ground zero?  At your house?

What I learned atop of what I already knew is amazing to me.  What the preppers can't teach you when they have not yet seen a disaster is a book in itself.  So, I will try to share these small important details as I have come to learn them. Disaster preparedness is more than preparing ahead of time, it is also and just as importantly about enduring it as it occurs and regrouping from it afterwards.  It is going to be more than planting those stored seeds.  For thousands to millions of people, it already is.

As prepared as I was, I was overwhelmed to tears at times during the post-fire weeks by things that were out of my control. I managed to rope it back into my control after I saw what was happening which took about four weeks and then another four weeks to get it back into my control. I was certainly taken by surprise by many facets of a disaster and how it is managed and how it is NOT managed . . . and how you roll in it all.

Half of what I owned survived. I got half of the worth of what I lost by my insurance agency. It is considered that I survived well . . . one of the few who did. I returned to ground zero and began to record and watch everything that happened in the destroyed town. I watched and took keen note of everything that happened to my friends, my neighbors and myself. And I am still watching.

I lost two good friends in the fire. Out of approximately 30,000 people who evacuated in 12 hours, 84 died.

So we open a new book on Climate Change and Natural Disasters that addresses not preparations, but engagement and endurance of these disasters. A training on immersment.  Not an "overview". A inch by inch and hour by hour testament. The afterthoughts are an entire chapter. I was surprised by what thoughts bubbled up in my mind at different times.

I was at the top of the list of disaster preppers, my name would be found right up there with the experts in senario preparedness had I continued with my Emergency Preparedness website in 2005, but again, I felt that my community was not interested and I shut it down. Twenty years of preps and skill learning. I could teach and preach with the best of them were I not already tamed into silence by my piers and my unwillingness to be pooh-pooh'ed anymore by anyone.

Was I prepared? Yes! I survived ok. I was also luckier than most. That helps. The aftermath, however, is something few preppers have fully realized and exposed to others until now.

Laura Gannon
DisasterAge

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