Fire in Paradise

The recent fire in California and subsequent blackout is another scary reminder that we cannot grow jaded about the increasingly destructive consequences of climate change.

This short was effective, timely, and just an overall terrifying presentation of what those poor people went through during the Camp Fire. Mad respect to all the fire fighters, first responders, and even the researchers and scientists out there trying to sort this mess out.

Towards the end of the documentary I saw a skeleton in a car, but it may not have been real. To my knowledge, all cadavers were removed as soon as they were found. Nobody was allowed back into Paradise until everything had been inspected, which took a couple of months. If they were joking about the skeleton being there, it was in very poor taste.

I watched this short film about the devastating "Camp Fire" in Paradise, CA on Netflix. Some of the footage in this is just amazing. In this day and age with everyone recording things on their cell phones, it amounts to some scary footage of people literally driving through flames as they try to escape to safety. It's terrifying, and it shows exactly how fast a wildfire can get out of control and why we need to enact climate and environmental policies to try to stop this horrible trend in which wildfires are getting worse and worse each year. My heart breaks for the people of Paradise and other people who have had their lives turned upside down by wildfires. This documentary does a good job of painting a picture of that day - how everything went from normal to horrific but in mere minutes.

These first person accounts were most interesting but the documentary has a subtext that climate change is the reason for so many destructive forest fires in California. Only part of one sentence mentions the real reason for these disasters and that one sentence tries to diminish it. Forest fires are natural and lighting starts them as they are a part of the natural ecosystem. However, in California so called environmentalists have put through laws which allow the build up of dense waste material on the forest floor for years, which in the past nature addressed with natural burning. Due to these forced buildups, when the ignition spark finally comes such fires are supercharged and almost impossible to control. The climate in California is the same climate that weather researchers have recorded for many decades. And, as in the past, there are dry spells and high winds that are natural for the region. A change to a more sensible pragmatic forest management concerning waste buildup on the forest floor, like was in place decades ago, would make forest fires in California manageable again.

This was an amazingly done documentary on how quickly devastation can happen. I applaud all survivors and am amazed at all the volunteer efforts. The emergency crews were amazing and I hope to see a second part on the rebuilding of Paradise