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What is he grateful for after losing everything?
On Thursday, the residents of Paradise reflected on this issue during their first Thanksgiving holiday since the city's fire of 27,000 residents, killing at least 83 people and destroying most homes to ashes. Many of them are now homeless, living in evacuation centers across northern California, some camping in tents even as the weather turns cold and rainy.
In the nearby town of Chico, top chefs Jose Andreas, Tyler Florence and Guy Fieri offered free meals and 8,000 pounds of turkey. Volunteers included firefighters who participated in the evacuation and Virginia Partain, 64, a teacher at Paradise High School, whose home had been set on fire.
"I've lost everything, so what else will I do?" She asked, wearing turtleneck knotted in the sense of color in which she s & # 39; He had escaped.
Partain was able to save only his cats, a blanket and the college admission tests of his students. But she described a feeling of intense gratitude for just surviving. "I sat with my cats last night and I just held them in their hands, and I thought it was a new chapter, a new normal, we just need to start a new life."
In the evacuation centers this week, several people said it was a paradise they had to thank, because it was more than the houses that made it up.
Charlene Perry, 58, said that before the fire, it seemed like the sky was smiling at him. After 18 months homeless in Chico, a pastor and his wife helped her find a caravan in a mobile home park for seniors in Paradise. Housewarming gifts were inundated with her.
"I was so blessed," she said. "The ladies of the church gave me things – a beautiful bedspread, a pillow, a set of plates even though I had a set of plates, I was so blessed right and left. There was a lot of love. People were so happy that I finally found a home. "
When the fire broke out, she only escaped with blankets that she had crocheted. She remembers seeing a neighbor of the mobile home park, stuck in the smoke, apparently too stunned to move. He did not have time to help her and she does not know if he survived. Now, again, she is homeless.
Don Martin, 62, was also unsurprisingly short of warm feelings.
"I had planned to die there and would have liked to go there," he said of his caravan in Paradise. "It was just for me and the dog."
A former dental technician and truck driver, Martin suffers from diabetes and peripheral neuropathy. He has a morphine pump attached to his spine.
"I had no reason to feel grateful for a long time," he said. He described himself as a kind of hermit who was nevertheless delighted to live in the wooded and peaceful area of Paradise with his mix of pitbull-chihuahua, Ralph and seven cats.
All cats died in the fire that destroyed his caravan and in the evacuation center he picked up the norovirus. At least, he says, "was not as bad as it says."
Faith – and good fire insurance – convinced Barbara Kramer, 79, whose house and two-bedroom car were destroyed.
"Apparently, I lost everything but I did not lose anything," she said. "We are Christians and all we have belongs to the Lord, so if everything is gone, these are just things."
She knew that for some it might seem flippant. "They say," People have lost everything they worked for all their lives, and you should not talk about it lightly, "and I'm not, it's just me. no loss, no devastation, no sadness, and we have fire insurance, we take care of it.
The insurance company, she said, had booked her with her husband at a Hilton hotel for two weeks.
Kory Honea, Sheriff of Butte County, said Wednesday that the list of missing persons had been raised to 870. The authorities pointed out that many people on the list could be safe and not realize that "no one else is missing." they had been missing.
Fire Chief Ken Lowe, who drove five locomotives into the community hours after the start of the fire, also saved hundreds of lives by putting residents under the lee of the trucks.
Lowe is a man to whom we owe our gratitude. But he was not on a pedestal – he was behind the buffet, serving food.
"For us to be here two weeks later," he said, watching them come in and serve them a hot meal, it's an honor for me.
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