Fire in Paradise

Written by Alastair Gee and Dani Anguiano

Narrated by T. Ryder Smith

The harrowing story of the most destructive American wildfire in a century.

There is no precedent in postwar American history for the destruction of the town of Paradise, California. On November 8, 2018,
the community of 27,000 people was swallowed by the ferocious Camp Fire, which razed virtually every home and killed at least 85
people. The catastrophe seared the American imagination, taking the front page of every major national newspaper and top billing on
the news networks. It displaced tens of thousands of people, yielding a refugee crisis that continues to unfold.

Fire in Paradise is a dramatic and moving narrative of the disaster based on hundreds of in-depth interviews with residents,
firefighters and police officers, and scientific experts. Alastair Gee and Dani Anguiano are California-based journalists who have
reported on Paradise since the day the fire began. Together they reveal the heroics of the first responders, the miraculous escapes of
those who got out of Paradise, and the horrors experienced by those who were trapped. Their accounts are intimate and unforgettable,
including the local who left her home on foot as fire approached while her 82-year-old father stayed to battle it; the firefighter who
drove into the heart of the inferno in his bulldozer; the police officer who switched on his body camera to record what he thought
would be his final moments as the flames closed in; and the mother who, less than 12 hours after giving birth in the local hospital,
thought she would die in the chaotic evacuation with her baby in her lap. Gee and Anguiano also explain the science of wildfires, write
powerfully about the role of the power company PGE in the blaze, and describe the poignant efforts to raise Paradise from the ruins.

This is the story of a town at the forefront of a devastating global shift—of a remarkable landscape sucked ever drier of moisture
and becoming inhospitable even to trees, now dying in their tens of millions and turning to kindling. It is also the story of a lost
community, one that epitomized a provincial, affordable kind of Californian existence that is increasingly unattainable. It is, finally, a
story of a new kind of fire behavior that firefighters have never witnessed before and barely know how to handle. What happened in
Paradise was unprecedented in America. Yet according to climate scientists and fire experts, it will surely happen again

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: May 5, 2020
• ISBN: 9781980047940

Reviews for Fire in Paradise

[Becki · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of the best disaster books I've read/listened to. It's meticulously researched by skillful writers. With story after story centered on the human impact of the fire. This story isn't full of unnecessary fluff or backstory. It tells you exactly what you need to know before the fire and then you get right into the harrowing events & recovery. Each person's story is given respect and dignity. This book has no dull points and no points I'd wish to skip. It sets a high standard for other such books to follow.

[shrike58 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

So...having finished this the other evening, I went to bed thinking that maybe I'd just finished a book that was going to be a classic like Norman Maclean's "Young Men and Fire." The next day, I had to conclude that, no, as gripping as this work is, it's probably just journalism, not classic history. However, this is very good journalism, as the authors tell a poignant tale of the obliteration of a community, for which the chances of a worst-case scenario playing out was always high.That might be the lesson here. At the time of the "Camp" Fire, the coverage made me wonder what the people on the ground were thinking. This book is illustrative of how the local folks were not naive about their circumstances, but no one, outside of a few professional firefighters, were actually thinking in terms of what the the real worst-case scenario could look like. To be fair, very few people can think in those terms, as in the face of the worst-case scenario, you're just doomed. That the human toll was not worse is a tribute to the planning that was done, and the heroism of the first responders.As for the culpability of Pacific Gas & Electric, a running thread in this book, the authors don't push that to the hilt. However, as dubious as the past behavior of the corporate management might have been, the failure of their power lines is probably more a commentary on how while PG&E is too big to fail, it's also probably too big to really manage its assets. If one was going to be fair, obsolescent infrastructure inadequately maintained is a chronic problem in this country, exacerbated by sprawl.Finally, as I'm writing this, the community around Lake Tahoe has just been saved from the "Caldor" Fire; disasters like this remain a threat into the future of what is now looking like the "Pyrocline." A new age of fire birthed by massive climate change.