Fanning the Flames of War On California Pt. 8 ~ No One IsTo Get Out Al

Video Transcript:

We are in the midst of a bushfire crisis tonight. The likes of which this state has never seen. Right now there are an unprecedented 17 fire fronts burning out of control at emergency level. The RFS police people are trapped in their homes across multiple locations. Fear's fire is still burning at emergency level at Woodford. This fire is threatening homes south of the Great Western Highway and residents are being urged to seek shelter as this fire approaches. Wind is causing tough conditions for crews. Embers being blown ahead of the fire front and they're also creating spot fires. Jan as a party is with us now from RFS headquarters Jane. There are fears now that people could actually be trapped inside their homes. That's right there but multiple locations along the Mid-North coast. We are hearing at this stage, unconfirmed reports that there are people trapped inside homes and that fire crews are not able to reach these people. The advice for them is to stay inside, seek shelter inside and wait until the firefront passes and then when it has passed try to get away from that structure if it is burning. It is very grim advice to pass on. While houses on the ground explode into fireballs. Can you please help us? For all those who tried to escape that day the drive out was terrifying. The roads were choked with traffic. The fire was spreading rapidly. Once she realized how bad it was Christina tried calling 911 hoping firefighters could rescue her mum. Later that day she started searching at the evacuation centers and reported her mother missing. Then a few days later, searchers found her remains. I was a living room. They must have found her because they dug there. Just sitting in the living room. It's not yet clear how many people were trapped by the fire but many of those who lived here were elderly and some couldn't make it out on their own. In the days after boards were plastered with desperate pleas from family members, many suspected hundreds were unaccounted for. When the official list came out, more than when thousand names were on it. You know there was a discussion. They talked about this and they said, Sheriff if we put this out, you know there's going to be big, there's going to be duplicate. It may cause some people concerned about the length of it. But I ultimately felt it was more important to get the information out. Some of the names were on there twice. Other entries are incomplete. Each day the list swells and shrinks depending on who else is reported missing and who is found. Hundreds of searchers have found out across the unrecognizable neighborhoods picking through the ash and rubble of the 13,000 buildings that were incinerated here. All of these properties were quickly searched after the fire but now crews are taking a much more thorough look. And when they're done, they spray paint a marking on the driveway like this one. Says what time the crews were here and also whether or not there was a victim. Bill, did you make your way up here? This is the tub and the shower. That looks like the upper piece is right there in front of you. So I think there's a, that's bad. Jason Deaton and his team of volunteers came from Oregon to help out. They're focused on searching what were bedrooms and living rooms, places where people were likely to be. So since we can't sift through everything, we're looking for the higher probability areas. Now how does this compare to what your, your team would normally search? Normally we're looking for a missing person out in the woods that's alive. So this is drastically different than what we normally use to do. Even if it's a person that's no longer alive, not of this scale. We have no idea what, how many are what they'll be out here. So this is a big, I hope that we brought 12 volunteers down here until we changed when we get back. They then looking at them today, she feels consumed with guilt. I did pack. You know, it was terrible to think how, you know, dying in flames and I could stay longer and waited is just really awful. Her mother, one of the many victims in what is now the deadliest buyer ever in California, and that list will almost certainly grow as crews go laught by laught, picking through what once were homes and are now the site of a grim search. And once again, I'm going to play the start of the Paradise Police Dispatcher recording the morning of the event, telling people to stay and not leave, keeping them in homes. Are we supposed to be evacuated or alive? No, you'll be notified. There's a fire north of Concal, up off the highway 70. No danger to paradise, okay? What is that? Evacuation left side of the fence road? What says that? But fire. Okay. Okay, we haven't been advised of that. If you have gotten a phone call or if you feel, if flames or feel the need to leave, then do that at this time. But we haven't been notified, okay? The emergency planners had divided the town into 14 zones. They would be evacuated in turn, depending on where the fire came from. 18 minutes after fire entered the town. We've been taking mandatory evacuations for the entire of Concal. I don't think anybody envisioned that happening. In the future, the city of Malibu was creating zones for evacuations, so that rather than calling for everybody to leave at the exact same time, they can call zone one and zone two. And then a few hours later, they can have other zones so that the highway is not going to be overwhelmed. If they weren't signed up, they weren't going to get alert on their mobile devices, on their text messages or for their emails. But they would have had you out-activated the other system. That's true. Sonoma emergency manager opted out of activating mass cell phone alert for evacuations. Sonoma County never activated a mass cell phone alert that could have worn hundreds of thousands of people the community to evacuate their homes during Monday's deadly fire, saving many lives I might add as well. Sonoma County officials said they worried it would have caused confusion, but the Bay Area Unit has learned the emergency personnel in Lake, Marinin, Orange counties all use the emergency wireless system to inform thousands of residents about evacuations in their counties. Upgraded to the so-called alert system that was activated in July of 2016. The short answer for people who wonder if they're asking why didn't we use the broader alert? What do you say? The short answer is that in order 500,000 simultaneous phone calls is not an appropriate way to do effective evacuation alerts and warning. But the people in Coffee Park in Marquesta states, in Fountain Grove and beyond, many of those people told us they didn't get the alert. Are you saying that's because they weren't signed up for the proper alert? I don't. I can't answer that question. I don't know if individual people got the alert or not. I'm telling you they didn't. So, and I'm saying what I'm trying to say is that if they weren't signed up, they weren't going to get alert on their mobile devices, on their text messages, or for their emails. But they would have had you out-activated the other system. That's true. That's true. And you decided not to. I think I've justified my reasons. I think I've made my professional assessment. I think I think I'm in, I think we're in a position where we use the tools that we thought would be most effective to get at the people. People didn't receive the alert. It was a very quick, fast-moving event. We did the best we could. No, you did not do the best. No, sir, you cost many, many lives because you did not do your job. Maybe you were told to stand down, but you need to go on trial, sir. Santa Rosa residents from Fountain Grove to Coffee Park told similar stories from neighbors, law enforcement, smoke and fire at their doorsteps. I never got an alert asked about the decision. I'll notice the guy's name, Christopher Hellgren. Hellgren, grinning through Hell folks, just with Joe Friar. Hellgren, along with emergency coordinator, were both out of the area when they notified of the farms. He said he did not realize the magnitude until 6 a.m. Gee, for him, I got a call from my neighbor banging on my door and I got out. Why couldn't this guy get notified, huh? Man, he said the 500,000 residents could have caused a traffic jam. Give me a break. Sonoma County is a broad area. People were getting out anyway. Nothing left. As that fire was fast approaching on Sunday night, neighbors turned into first responders going door to door to make sure everyone was safe. It's devastating. It literally looks like a bomb went off. When Heather Bowers saw Ash raining down in her front yard Sunday night, she became the neighborhood emergency alert system. They were like, what's going on? I'm like, you need to pack up your stuff and get out. Bowers mother and two brothers lost their homes. Her mother escaping with only the clothes she was wearing. Did anybody get any warnings? No. Many people in the danger zones were caught by surprise. I needed help getting out. I was thinking they call it like, you know, I was on fire. I needed to evacuate it. Communication problems in general have been difficult. Sonoma County Sheriff Rob Girdono says alerts were sent out, but admits not everyone would have gotten them. Okay, off the route town, there's multiple car pilots and you're a tow truck driver. And so you've been seeing these cars because you're going up there? Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, there's so many personnel up there. So many emergency personnel. I mean, everybody's like, there's nothing. Everything up there is everything but local cops. There's no local cops up there. Really? There's police. I don't think so. I haven't seen any. Well, they, um, but we've gotten a boy telling us that the sheriff that dropped by. He was from uh, very good. You were telling you or something like that? And what is man happy getting yourself out? I mean, at least everywhere down the hill, um, do I get traffic and let's do the math. If the fire starts at 6.37, 30 in the morning, let's say. And now it's 11 o'clock. You're saying you're leaving? Is that right? Yeah. All right. Three hours to get from UBUS city that they're going to be able to alert to call to bring sheriffs in there. Are you kidding me? No, I've never seen it so well set up. I mean, they had uh, sheriff's flag in every radio. This way, go down. We have every light. They literally directed us. We couldn't go anywhere near to go. We had to go. They directed all the traffic from our end. The air cars to order from close to Orville. And I would say I would 99 down and wouldn't let us get on to go to Chico. We had to go out to Orville and go all the way around through, um, during the um, and other federal towns to get to Chico because they shut off the online. And I wouldn't let us get on to I, I, I, I, I, I, why? I don't know. Kind of the name of the place. You want a terminal clear? No, I got to any. I'll leave. We'll over. Can we get out of the truck? What? We'll rock house restaurant. Will you hear what had happened? No, if I had been forced me out of my house, the 3 AM in the morning, they drove out behind me and it burned a couple hours later. Wait, the fires didn't start. They'll 630. Go and take in the next morning, Friday morning. So you stayed here when it started? Yeah, see the fire was going last pretty fast. But this way to the south, it was going slower than a baby crawls. They could have easily stopped at it deadwood or down here, dogwood or there was a number of places they could have stopped it. Oh, I'm sorry, man. Can we help it all? We got clothes. We got food. Did you need anything? We've gotten lots of stuff from the nation centers. I appreciate it. Why didn't they come help you? What's that? Why didn't they come help you if they could have put it out? I don't know, but... When they forced me at 3 AM, I drive down to where the hardware store is two miles down the road. There's 50 engines lined up in a neat route. Shitting their dark, multiple dizzards. Nobody around. While the fires are burning, was the road passable here? It looked like this was hell to get down here. Well, Friday morning, yeah. The fire didn't come through the pass up there until about 6 o'clock. In the morning? So, Thursday morning, it started at 6.30. Paradise got towards at 8.30 in the morning. And that's down below here. So the campfire they're saying it started at Polga. Paradise is last. Okay, got you. And it was me having to last pretty fast, but this way from the fire was south, and it was just crawling. And they had bulldozers down below the road here, and they didn't bring them up the hill. A few miles down the highway. They had road 25 parts through the middle of the highway, another road 25 parked off the side. They had all sorts of equipment. None of it ever got used. And we down the wrong side, that way. Well, we're told that the people were being held up as late as 11 o'clock in the morning of leaving Skyway. They had one lane. They wouldn't let anybody. This guy was out of gas. Yeah. So they tried to stop me and turn me around. I believe the cops let me tell me that, you know, they'll have no vibe because you see my firefire by the plate on my truck. For some reason, that just, you know, that's one of the things I could think of. Because he was standing in front of my truck, making me stop and stop all the traffic behind me. And they were trying to, you know, to get out and run or go turn around or something. And you know, I was like, I'm going. I'm going, I'm going to, I know what's going to happen. I can't go turn around. Go back, do anything or stop. I like you going down there. I knew which way I had to go. And so how did you get out? Because I heard people that day were staying there. They were stuck in paradise. They couldn't get out to like those that got out or at five six o'clock at night. And were they all stuck in a line? They seemed like everybody was just waiting. And someone warned me, someone was running. Because the car's got too high to hurt. I don't know. I was just getting a fire out of nowhere. The traffic is clean. And the weather's really time to talk about it. Every time I talk about it, it tastes good. Just be down. Digitio. Now the fire started around 4 p.m. Yesterday afternoon. And neighbors told me this fire swept through the mountains in a snap, not leaving any time for firefighters to get to this community. You couldn't see the fire. All you saw was a smoke coming in. And then then you then you'd felt the heat and you knew the fire was on you. Two doors down. neighbors say an elderly couple were inside. The woman was bedridden and the man stayed with her as long as he could until the fire was there. Neighbors then said that he came out of the home and had burdens all over, including over his face. Now I just spoke with... But I put together all the victims' testimony. Not all of them, a lot of them, interviews and what they had in common, their common threads. And the common threads that you'll hear about, no evacuations were orders were given the day of the fire. Blocked by non-local police from leaving the day of the fires, not many got out, most perished. The fire trucks stood down. No winds the morning of the fire. PGN set up a massive staging area the day, weeks before the fires. And so did FEMA out at the Chico Airport. And look at this, they're calling this a force fire. They can justify it. Again, they were not notified. No people were notified. The only way they got out was through Facebook or through friends calling and saying, get out. But many maybe had their low jack or on-stars turned over where they were pulled over to the sides of the road. The other testimony many had to get out of their cars and walk because that's what the police were telling them to do. Well, why were they having to get out of their cars and walk? My add that I really need to leave because it says, you know, they're evacuation orders, mandatory orders, you know, evacuate. Where were that fire truck? Did evacuation orders come? Because most people say they got no evacuation orders. No, it was a warning at first. And but like I said, by that time I was already done packing my shit and telling the neighbors to leave immediately. Or they're going to die, but you know, they're going to die. You know, they all know I'm a firefighter. You know, I'm a big red truck, you know, a firefighter truck and you know, they know who I am. So, the one guy was out there trying to, like, I got a leaf blower trying to blow all the shit off. And I was like, dude, you're just going to go and you're, you know, you don't want to get around here. You know, all that happens. 80 footballs killed the minute. They didn't take me long to get out of that road. And then, you know, shoot. Start to get no die. To move forward in front of this, there was a red barn kind of in front of this mobile home park. And then try to just stop for like, I don't know, 30, 45 minutes. About that. And I started hearing that people in that moment park were still around their homes and their cars. And the traffic was so jammed that they couldn't pull away from their homes because the traffic went all the way back to their home. And they couldn't come down the driveway to get out onto the road and get away from their houses which were on fire. The flames started slowly catching up to our cars. And the, there was a Pepsi truck back behind us that started, like, unloading all their stuff with a plan of possibly having people load up in there. And then having like, air drops drop on us as well as the traffic keep us alive, basically. Fortunately, they did make a run for Skyway. And so the group ahead of me tried to go down Skyway to get out, but it allowed me to move forward up until about the fact like I was like across from this faster. And but unfortunately, the people that made went on Skyway, went on Skyway to get out, that that excursion failed. They ended up having to abandon the vehicles and then being positioned back by the fireman. At that point, they basically told us we were surrounded by fire. We are not going anywhere in our cars. We are not escaping. We just have to sit, sit put. And so they blocked off the, the blocked off the parking lot that's being put in with the optimal and the cafe they were building. It wasn't yet complete. And they blocked that off. Everyone just got out of their cars, left their cars in the road and then went to that parking lot as a last-age effort place to just make our standard and hopefully we wouldn't burn to death. I know this is really a hard question and how long you lived in Paradise? About a year and a half. And I really died at that amount. Oh God, I'm so sorry. Yeah, she didn't get out of time. She went back to get her cats in, sorry. She went back to get her cats and now it cost her life. Yeah. Oh my gosh. How many, how many people do you know got out? Do you personally have talked to that got out of there? I'm very sure. How many do you know that don't, the, the personally know that you haven't heard from six weeks later? I don't know. At least a couple hundred. Why isn't there more people asking where everybody is? I don't know. I don't know if many people got out like this and they didn't. And they were just there were multiple copies. We saw about probably four or a half. And none of us, none of us, we used to share that we saw were locals. That's what we heard. It was all militarized police. Yeah, we told this private military and actually as we were coming back, so we realized that they considered my comparator, I should have got to go. We drive back and as we're driving back, a convoy actually, we pull over and it passes out behind them. And it turned out that convoy that was it, it's done if us. Why pass our street? Why at the Paradise City limits? Fine, they blocked the road off. Every time, now we've been through, we've been in the house for a letting years. And every time they've been a fire, Penn Road is packed and it takes hours and hours to get out. As we move them and because there's Penn Road, Clark Road and Skyway that you're supposed to use to exit. And did you see in block? Can't run at the city limit? When we left, it was almost at 1130. Yeah, we should have had an 1130. It was a 1130. And when we dropped, I can't show them a hundred miles an hour all the way down the hill. Because there was no other cars. Wait, so so for the hours, no guys were parked on Skyway until like five o'clock at night and couldn't go anywhere. Correct. So why did the why was why would the Penn Road block? Why would they use me to exit? And when we got down, pass one side where they're intense and intense road, which will then take you if you take your hand, then it connects to Clark. Right. They have that block and only reason they let us through is because our daughter's car was almost got a gas and we couldn't go down 70 to Orville to get out. We had to pick the dirt and Penn Road and go to the corner at Clark and do that. Pants with a gas station one and get gas for her. So they let you through. So they let you through the block? They escorted us through. Yeah, escorted us. Actually, until we got to the traffic, and I said, okay, well, wait here in line. Just keep turning your car off. Yeah, excuse me. Excuse me, ladies. I need to ask this question, Shera. Excuse me. Excuse me. But CBS news, the Guardian, the New York Times, they're saying 52,000 people evacuate. I don't believe it. I don't think so. They want to evacuate. They want to get the block from getting out. It Pants Road, which is the upper bench of Paradise. You can't get out there and it's blocked. How are they going to get out? There wasn't many cars down the floor. We stopped from all of them on Durns Pants. There wasn't many down there either. There wasn't many cars at all down there. And what's interesting to that gas station, I ended up, he, they, he had no cars. Yeah, no cars. He had no cars. There were two PZM trucks parked up on the gas station. And they weren't doing just working on the car, but they had turned hip-hop. And then, you know, we didn't repile the Paradise, but they had a hip-hop. Yeah, so you know, it's very kind to let me leave my car there. And we just left it and I was resentful. Breyer joins us now for more. Breyer, given what you've seen in Paradise, what really stands out for you? Well, Adrian, really just the sheer level of destruction in a town of 26,000, 13,000 buildings were destroyed. So nearly everybody is now homeless. People are living in tents at the Walmart, at the Fairground. You have families of five or six cramped in a single motel room and now trying to figure out just what's next. And of course, the other thing is all of the uncertainty around the death toll and just how high it could be. And it's really hard to to understate all of the confusion around the number of people still missing. A lot of people have been putting up posts online, looking for their relatives. And I spoke with one woman who said she received a message from someone that her aunt had been found. So obviously a lot of relief there, but then she found out a few hours later that that person was wrong. Her aunt was still missing. So that miscommunication and confusion really just makes a terrible situation. All that much worse. You know, it's so interesting to get your perspective on this, Breyer. You've covered wildfires like this before. You were in Fort McMurray when fired tore through that city. How does the situation in Paradise compare? Well, there's no doubt that the fire in Fort McMurray was devastating, but really what happened in Paradise was worse on every single level. Think of the evacuation in Fort McMurray. 90,000 people were able to leave the city. And no one died as they as they left Fort McMurray. Well, in Paradise, that certainly didn't happen. We don't know how many people didn't make it out. But we do know some people had to abandon their cars and try to outrun the fire on foot. In Fort McMurray, a lot of people were certain that they were going to rebuild. Some of the folks have been speaking with in Paradise say that they're not sure that they want to go back. Not only is the town nearly destroyed, but they don't want to move back into neighborhoods where there's been so much death, Adrian. Okay, Breyer. Thanks very much. Breyer Stewart in California tonight. And that fire crews are not able to reach these people. The advice for them is to stay inside, seek shelter inside and wait until the fire front passes. And then when it has passed, try to get away from that structure if it is burning. It is very grim advice to pass on.