For the mayor of Paradise, the deadly fires raging in Los Angeles County this week feel all too familiar.
“Listening to the wind speeds and the lack of rain and the lack of being able to get aircraft up, it was 100% reminiscent of what happened to us on November 8th, 2018,” Steve Crowder told KNX News’ Karen Adams.
That day, Paradise was wiped out by the Camp Fire, which killed 85 people and destroyed nearly everything in its wake. The town’s population fell from 26,000 to 2,500 overnight.
“I came back up with Cal Fire the next day and our town looked like a nuclear bomb had gone off,” said Crowder, who was then a councilmember. “As I toured the town, I'm thinking, oh man, how are we ever gonna rebuild this? It's never gonna happen.”
But it did – and Crowder said the town is stronger now than it was before.
“There were some positives that have come out of this fire,” he said. “This town never would have had new roads. We're going to have new roads. We never would have had underground utilities. We're gonna have those now.”
Paradise also put new fireproofing laws in place, which even drew a major insurance company back to the fire-ravaged town.
“Mercury Insurance actually came up to Paradise recently and looked around and have deemed us one of the most fire-safe communities around,” Crowder said. “So they have already started writing some policies here. They're not going to take everybody, but they've agreed to write about 200 policies here.”
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To those who have lost everything in the Eaton Fire and Palisades Fire, Crowder urged not to give up hope.
“As you walk through town and think, ‘This is never going to get better,’ it will get better,” he said. “It's not going to be easy, but it will get better, and you just have to have that faith.”
As of Thursday morning, the number of structures destroyed in the two fires is estimated to be in the thousands.
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