Lizzie Johnson > Quotes

“Soon Carr would join a search-and-recovery team tasked with looking for the dead. The team would comb the streets, hunt through ruined homes and cars, explore ditches and gullies. It was unrelentingly sad work, but it brought some fulfillment and meaning to the disaster. Tragedy, Carr knew, turned the human experience inside out and forced people to confront realities they never had to in times of prosperity. Trauma eventually came to everyone, in greater or lesser degrees. The trick was to notice the sings of distress: when a normally upbeat person shut down. When an introvert talked too much. When a leader drank to excess. How were first responders going to deal with this tragedy? What story were they going to tell themselves?”
― Lizzie Johnson, Paradise: One Town's Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire

“They thought about all the things they had lost: the Gold Nugget Museum, the Elks Lodge, Mendon's Nursery. The old Paradise sign topped by the bandsaw halo. The sound of children on playgrounds, the bustle of downtown. Eighty-five seconds of slice for how much it had hurt, and still hurt. Silence, too, for the things that they held on to: Johnny Appleseed Days and Gold Nugget Days; trick-or-treating for full-size candy bars on Lancaster Loop; balmy summer evenings at the drive-in movie theater, a mattress thrown in the truck bed; the red dirt that stained their clothing; how every phone number began with 877 and directions were simply "upper", "middle", or "lower" Paradise - no explanation needed; the cool waters of the Feather River; the air that smelled like heaven after the first winter rain or the first warm day of summer. Somehow it all felt holy.

If a town was only houses and buildings, would they still be gathered here?”
― Lizzie Johnson, Paradise: One Town's Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire

“But access only meant so much, and sometimes Carr felt extraneous. He didn't have the practical skills of a detective. Rather, his role was to represent comfort, even to the nonbelievers. To let firefighters and police officers know that if they wanted to talk, he was there. His specialty was not disaster but its aftermath.”
― Lizzie Johnson, Paradise: One Town's Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire

“The truth was, California had always burned - as much as 5.5 to 19 million acres annually in prehistoric times, or up to 19 percent of the state's land. Flames were as typical of the changing seasons as rainstorms and blizzards. The same swath of hillside blackened by the Oakland-Berkeley Hills Fire of 1991 had also burned in 1923, 1970, and 1980. But residents were quick to forget the past, and amnesia was part of California's identity. The state legislature left it up to local governments to protect their constituents, and thus development continued unfettered, and more and more homes became kindling.”
― Lizzie Johnson, Paradise: One Town's Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire

“The dogwood tree in what used to be their backyard was a blackened stump. Every spring, Rachelle had mailed its cream-colored buds to her family back in Fresno. She remembered how the tree had sheltered her on that night the previous spring when she had clutched the pregnancy test and learned that a baby was coming. Her son was finally here, but he had some into a world that Rachelle didn't recognize.”
― Lizzie Johnson, Paradise: One Town's Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire

“Rachelle knew her wedding bands were in the wreckage somewhere. She had taken them off a month before and stored them in her bedroom nightstand, after her fingers had become too swollen from pregnancy to wear them. But she knew she wouldn't bother to sift through the ash, desperate to find what had once been so precious to her, only to find warped rings she couldn't wear. Mourning her losses again seemed masochistic, like a fire's secondary burns. What was the point?”
― Lizzie Johnson

“Then, on a blustery evening in October 2017, the worst wildfires in modern state history ignited. They ripped across Northern California, pushed by the Diablo Winds. The infernos killed 44 people and hospitalized another 192. They incinerated fabled vineyards and the working-class Santa Rosa neighborhood of Coffey Park. People died in swimming pools, in mobile home parks, in their bedrooms and their cars. A fourteen-year-old perished at the end of his family’s driveway, unable to outrun the flames. PG&E was held responsible for seventeen of the twenty-one wildfires—which burned an area eight times the size of San Francisco—though the company escaped blame for the worst of the bunch.”
― Lizzie Johnson, Paradise: One Town's Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire

“Psychologists have identified three distinct phases in a human's response to disasters. The first is denial. Previous wildfires had brought a series of near misses to the Ridge, and the memory of these experiences was powerful, bringing with it a false sense of security. Denial was partly why people called friends and family members or scrolled indefinitely through their Facebook news feed instead of taking action. Others focused on their belongings, wasting valuable time cramming their vehicles instead of getting out. Facing the unknown, they found security in their possessions. Psychologists have found that at least 75 percent of people in a catastrophe remain frozen in this state of inaction.

After denial came the second and third phases - deliberation and action. Though the Town of Paradise had practiced evacuating before, people often made irrational choices when it mattered. Like passengers in airplane crashes - who often ignore closer exits to follow the crowd - drivers mindlessly headed in a conga line toward the Skyway, not thinking of alternatives. They ignored other open roads and paused at red lights and stop signs, even though police certainly wouldn't have ticketed them for blasting through the intersections. Others chose not to evacuate at all, overestimating their abilities and chances of survival. This sense of exceptionalism has come to be known as the Lake Wobegon effect, a term coined by a physician in the 1980s after he noticed that hundred of elementary schools across the nation claimed their students were above average - which, statistically, could not be true. The elderly were particularly guilty of this thinking, because input from others did little to sway a lifetime of survived experiences. Disliking change and the hassle of an evacuation, they often underestimated a wildfire's risk.

In many cases, it took a specific moment - witnessing a neighbor's house burning down or receiving a call from a family member with orders to evacuate - for a resident to think and react rationally to the crisis at hand. How quickly a person arrived at this phase depend on genetics, experience, and training.”
― Lizzie Johnson, Paradise: One Town's Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire

“It had taken Tammy a long time to realize that she didn't deserve to be treated as if she was nothing, that even with these stretch marks on her stomach from five pregnancies, she was beautiful and kind, worthy of love. She wished she had met her current boyfriend sooner. He was a local police officer who took Tammy out for steak on their first date and treated her with respect. Funny, with the best smile, he was also a good role model for her children. She was happy that she had finally achieved her dream of becoming a nurse, she told her family, but she was sorry that whole decades had passed before she had done something meaningful with her life.”
― Lizzie Johnson, Paradise: One Town's Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire

“At first, knocking on strangers' doors felt akin to a crime, as though he were intruding on their pain, but he came to see that his presence was important. He learned to exude peace and acceptance. Emotions needed to be felt, he would reiterate time and time again.”
― Lizzie Johnson, Paradise: One Town's Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire

“To me, the legend illustrates the cyclical nature of wildfires and suggests how we can better adapt as the climate changes. Managing fire, as Native Americans have done for thousands of years, rather than fighting it at every turn, can prevent tragedy. The Konkows once cultivated low-intensity burns, scorching the forest floor as a vegetation management practice. The technique was widely used - until European settlers, who viewed fire as unnatural and evil, arrived and quashed it. Conflagrations could still prove deadly, as the Konkow tale shows, but the land always healed and regenerated, healthier for the burn. Even today, the tribe maintains a deep respect for fire.

We can all learn something from the Konkows' knowledge and stewardship of the environment, and their kinship with nature. Their legend serves as a call to protect these spaces for future generations - in part to honor those who lived on this land before us.”
― Lizzie Johnson, Paradise: One Town's Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire