Grizzly Creek
Swamp Creek
Feather River Hwy.
Bear Ranch Creek
Cedar Creek
Feather River
Canyon
70
Camp Fire
Camp Creek
San
Francisco
CALIFORNIA
Los
Angeles
Poe Dam
Approx distance
from origin of fire
0 miles
Pulga
Concow Road
2 miles
Rim Road
70
4 miles
High Winds Road
Concow
Reservoir
70
Crain Ridge Road
6 miles
Magalia
Reservoir
Paradise TOWN limits
Magalia
Jordan Hill Road
Ridgewood Mobile
Home Park
Yankee Hill
Pentz Road
8 miles
Paradise
Skyway
Home of Jason Portillo
and Lidia Rosales
10 miles
Clark Road
12 miles
191
Butte Creek
Canyon
Skyway
Home of the
Wiggins Family
14 miles
Butte Valley
16 miles
18 miles
Neal Road
city limits
149
Chico
99
20 miles
Durham Dayton
Hwy.
Durham
Midway
Grizzly Creek
Swamp Creek
Feather River Hwy.
Bear Ranch Creek
Cedar Creek
Feather River
Canyon
70
Camp Fire
Camp Creek
San
Francisco
CALIFORNIA
Los
Angeles
Poe Dam
Approx. distance
from origin of fire
0 miles
Pulga
Concow Road
2 miles
Rim Road
70
4 miles
High Winds Road
Concow
Reservoir
Crain Ridge Road
70
6 miles
Paradise TOWN limits
Magalia
Reservoir
Magalia
Jordan Hill Road
Ridgewood Mobile
Home Park
Pentz Road
Yankee Hill
8 miles
Skyway
Paradise
Home of Jason Portillo
and Lidia Rosales
10 miles
Clark Road
12 miles
191
Butte Creek
Canyon
Skyway
Home of the
Wiggins Family
14 miles
Butte Valley
16 miles
18 miles
Neal Road
149
Chico
99
20 miles
Durham Dayton
Highway
Durham
Midway
Approx. distance
from origin of fire
Poe Dam
0 miles
Pulga
70
5 miles
70
Magalia
Ridgewood Mobile
Home Park
Paradise
TOWN limits
Home of Jason Portillo
and Lidia Rosales
10 miles
Skyway
191
Home of the
Wiggins Family
15 miles
city limits
149
Chico
99
20 miles
Durham
Nov. 8,
6:30 a.m.
Camp
Fire
Paradise,
Calif.
Fire extent
Nov. 8, 6 p.m.
nORTH
Around 8 a.m., the fire reaches Paradise.
With its evergreen forests and beautiful vistas, Paradise, population 26,000, has long been a haven for seniors and retirees, many of them residents of mobile homes.
The mountain town has likewise attracted families with children as a respite from the crippling costs that have made many California cities unaffordable.
It is in this lush terrain that the stage is set for a fiery disaster — the cul-de-sacs and winding wooded roads into the backcountry of Butte County.
Another defining element: the clock. It starts ticking around 7 a.m. for Jeffory Newton and his wife, Kathy — shortly after the fire breaks out near Poe Dam, about eight miles from them. Asleep at their home on Marin Court in Magalia, they are awakened by a text from their daughter, en route to work at a Paradise hospital. “I can see flames,” the text reads.
The Newtons scramble, and their escape effort extends to other family members. They first stop at their daughter’s house to rouse her son, then to a son’s house on Juno Court. The creeping, harrowing trip out in two vehicles takes four hours.
By 8 a.m. the first flames reach Paradise, where Ben Raulerson lives on Pearson Road. Mr. Raulerson, 44, is cursed with a bad car battery this morning. He gets a jump, but it is not enough.
The car dies again just as he and his mother-in-law are pulling out; she runs to the road and waves for help, and a man driving a pickup truck — Mr. Raulerson never learned his name — stops, most likely saving their lives.
“It was hell on earth getting out of there,” Mr. Raulerson said. “If we’d stayed 10 minutes longer we would have been burned.”
The home of James Betts, 33, was near the Jack in the Box restaurant at Skyway and Oliver Road in Paradise. As the fire spread across town, it felt as if it was coming from two directions by the time he and seven others, including a pregnant woman, tried to leave on foot.
They, too, were saved by a good Samaritan who stopped and took them all in his truck. Mr. Betts looked back and saw his house on fire.
Over 10,000 buildings, shown in red,
were more than 50 percent destroyed.
Pentz Rd.
PARADISE
Skyway
nORTH
1 MILE
Over 10,000 buildings,
shown in red, were more
than 50 percent destroyed.
PARADISE
Skyway
nORTH
1 MILE
By 10:45 a.m., flames are engulfing Ridgewood Mobile Home Park, the retirement community. That is when the evacuation order reaches the incorporated area where Robert Catalano and his girlfriend, Chris Jennings, live on Rich Bar Road.
Mr. Catalano, 65, checks on a friend, and then goes back home, intending to wet down the roof before leaving, but the power is already out, so the pump in his well no longer works.
The fire destroys just about everything they own. But they survive, making it down Centerville Road to Honey Run, and then onto the bumper-to-bumper maelstrom of Skyway.
Skyway
Camp Fire
CALIFORNIA
Magalia
70
Paradise
Pentz Rd.
Clark Rd.
32
Fire extent on
Nov. 8, 6 p.m.
70
191
191
Skyway
nORTH
Chico
Nov. 16
2 MILEs
99
99
Skyway
Camp Fire
CALIFORNIA
70
Paradise
Pentz Rd.
Clark Rd.
Fire extent on
Nov. 8, 6 p.m.
32
70
191
Skyway
nORTH
Chico
Nov. 16
5 MILEs
99
Skyway — a four-lane arterial that links the high pine country of the foothills and the valley cities like Chico — is a blessing to commuters and day-trippers. But on this day it becomes a place of desperation where people are stuck, creeping through gridlock as the flames close in.
Vehicles crash in the dense smoke, or run out of gas and are abandoned on the shoulder, making the passage harder still by narrowing the lanes for those still coming down. Skyway becomes a symbol of the fire, the name itself embedded in the story of the day.
Camp Fire continues to burn 10 days after it started, now expanding mainly on its eastern edges. Officials said on Saturday that the fire was about half contained. At least 76 people had been confirmed dead, and more than a thousand were still missing.
Follow The New York Times’s maps tracking the spread of the fires and California’s air quality.