Paradise Rising

“The most off-base calls we get from journalists are the ones about ‘Paradise Lost,’” says Colette Curtis, now assistant to the town manager. “I get it, it’s a catchy story line, but the truth is so much more interesting and exciting.” She’s talking after her lunch hour, one of the rare ones she gets these days. “We all used to take them every day before the fire,” she says with a laugh.“Now we’re almost too busy to eat.”

The Camp Fire started on November 8, 2018, and lasted for more than two weeks, killing 85, destroying more than 18,000 structures, and traumatizing tens of thousands of people. “Everybody was panicking,” Melanie Heilderberger told the newspaper, recalling what it was like to be trapped in one of the traffic jams that formed as people fled. “You can’t imagine how