PARADISE, Calif. — Rex Stewart was broke when he landed in Paradise, Calif., more than 40 years ago. But he found work as a carpenter, helping build parts of this mostly modest town of retirees and commuters tucked away in the Sierra Nevada foothills.
On Saturday, after escaping what is now believed to be the most destructive fire in California history, he stood outside an evacuation shelter with no more to his name than the coat he had on and a winter cap with a peace symbol on it.
“Paradise is gone,” Mr. Stewart, 66, said, pulling on a cigarette. “There’s nothing to go back to.”
Fires continue to rage on both ends of California, spreading with breakneck speed and displacing hundreds of thousands of people in a state where a once-seasonal worry has become a near-constant terror. At least nine are dead in the so-called Camp Fire, about 100 miles north of Sacramento, and two others have died in fires near Los Angeles.
Wildfires are fickle pillagers, pivoting to spare one thing and destroy another, twisted by wind and the fuels they feed on. Fire prevention authorities routinely drum the words “perimeter defense” into residents’ minds in this part of California. Keep trees trimmed and burnable things far from home, and fire’s danger diminishes.
