Camp Fire: Paradise residents say they received no mass cellphone alerts to evacuate, or to warn of fires

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PARADISE – Life-saving evacuation alerts failed to reach many residents during the catastrophic Camp Fire early Thursday morning, causing terrifying and crowded last-minute escapes, even death.

Angry residents say they received no official warning to flee and instead learned late of the danger when they smelled smoke or saw flames, or from family or neighbors — then faced gridlocked traffic, surrounded by flames, along the town’s few exit routes.

The Butte County Sheriff’s Department asserts that it issued alerts through its CodeRed phone notification system, but concedes that the effort fell short.

“I wish we had opportunity to get more alerts out, more warning out,” said Sheriff Kory Honea in a community meeting on Monday night. “We try to use any many systems as we can… But in the heat of this, it was moving so fast, it was difficult to get that information out.”

By Tuesday evening the death toll had grown to 48, with more than 7,000 homes destroyed. The county has an emergency notification system, through an opt-in phone database that is supposed to notify residents who opt-in via cell phone, landline, text or email.But it was no match for the speed of the fire, Honea said. Alerts aren’t instantaneous, he said. Before an alert is issued, firefighters must reach a blaze, identify which way it’s spreading and whether communities are on its route. Then they call the Sheriff’s Department, which deliberates which alerts should be sent — and where. Instead, many residents only were told to evacuate when they called 911 to report the fire.

Aware of its risk after the 2008 Humboldt and Lightning wildfires, Paradise had drafted a detailed evacuation plan, with the town carved up into zones for orderly exits. It staged a two-hour practice evacuation in June 2016, said Mayor Jody Jones, opening up a median lane on the main exit route and measuring traffic flow, a plan that officials said cut evacuation time by half.  Evacuation zone maps were distributed to residents. It rehearsed a phone communication center.

But actual execution of this plan — in a fast-moving complex situation — posed more challenging

“It got to point where this thing was outrunning us before we even knew we were in race… by that time we started trying to message and get that information out there,” Honea said.

Once Paradise residents escaped their homes, they found chaos on the roads. The town has 27,000 residents. But only three main exits.

“We were dead stopped in traffic and you couldn’t see,” said Zachary Byrd. “Everything was raging. Power poles were falling. It was raining ash. It sounded like a war.”

“We drove straight through flames, but it was the only way to get out of town,” he said. “It was the only way you knew.”

News of the fire was first announced on Twitter at 6:51 a.m. last Thursday, when officials reported that they were working to access a 10-acre blaze in the Camp Creek Road area near Highway 70 in the Feather River canyon, 20 minutes after flames had been spotted.

The first evacuation alert, also posted on Twitter, was announced about 80 minutes later at 8:03 a.m., for Pentz Road area along Paradise’s eastern flank, closest to the fire.

Sound asleep, yet only six miles away, Byrd knew nothing. Tech savvy, the 34-year-old had registered for the city’s opt-in CodeRed alert system. But no message aroused him.

At 8:20 a.m. he was awoken by his girlfriend, who rushed home from work.

“She was yelling ‘The city’s on fire, the city’s on fire!’,” he recalled. “I ran outside and the sky was blood red. There was crashing all around. I ran next door and pounded on my buddy’s door.” Byrd grabbed important documents, a bag of clothes and his dog. Roads were already clogged.

“Nobody knew,” he said. “There was nothing — no notification. A lot of elderly folks, maybe deaf or wheelchair-bound, maybe just sitting on their couch watching TV, they had no idea.”

In previous emergencies, such as the Oroville Dam failure and the October 2017 Honey Run Fire, Byrd and his neighbors received alerts by phone, he said. This time, nothing.

Others also said they didn’t get messages from the county’s Red Alert program Thursday. No news was delivered over the Amber Alert wireless emergency notification system, or through Nixle, they said. There was nothing on local radio. Television did not interrupt programming with an ‘emergency broadcast system’ warning. There were no sirens.

On Facebook, Cal Fire’s first post was at 10:07 a.m, and it was general, describing acreage and saying “Multiple evacuation orders have been issued.”

“We didn’t get a robo call, announcement or any notice from Cal Fire or city, We had to find out about it second-hand,” said Ethan Silverman.

“Neighbors – they came up and down the road telling us to leave,” said Gabriel Wilcox.

Even residents who spotted the social media alerts were confused, not knowing which “evacuation zone” they lived in, or which roads were open.  As flames approached, Erin Kennedy wrote: “Help! Where do I find a map of my zone?”

“Speak english,” tweeted DooKan to the Butte County Sheriff’s Department. “Who da — knows what “zone” they at with no power and internet?”

Some cars stalled, blocking traffic, as thick smoke clogged their air intake system. Other cars hit downed poles or wires. An ambulance reportedly caught fire. With poor visibility, drivers followed closely, causing accidents.

Fire radio transmissions reveal a hellish scene.

“Once the fire hits I’m going to pull the people out of the vehicles get them inside the buildings and leave the engines to protect them,” said one firefighter.

“Got multiple vehicles … people on foot right now, abandoning their vehicles, I’m trying to scoop them all up this will be a high priority,” said another. Said a third: “Report of numerous people taking refuge in a field.”

Paradise resident Mary Vincent watched a driver run off the road “into an iron fence. Then a truck plowed into them.”

At the end of Edgewood Lane, a dead-end road, the bodies of four victims were found in their cars and one just outside a vehicle — trapped when they discovered no exit, and overcome by flames and smoke.

The approach of evacuating by zone had worked in previous drills, Jones said, but no amount of practice could have prepared the city from the onslaught of the Camp Fire.

“The fire chief said it was like you had hundreds of matches in your hand and you spread them all around town and they all took,” Jones said. “There isn’t a town anywhere that could build the infrastructure so you would not have gridlock when you are evacuating everyone all at once.”

“Had we not had that plan, had we not practiced the plan, we would have lost so many more lives,” she said.

A new state law gives counties greater authority over emergency alerts, requiring an “opt out,” not “opt in,” system that requires residents ask not to be included in the alerts. The law allows officials to access the contact information of residents through the records of a public utilities or water, waste and recycling services..

Jones said she got a text and phone call but those without landlines who did not sign up for the cell phone notifications received no such warning.

“Lots of people have said to me, ‘I never got anything.’ It’s likely they never opted in,” she said. “We could have done better there.”