Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Fire in Paradise
    Fire in Paradise
    Fire in Paradise
    Audiobook7 hours

    Fire in Paradise

    Written by Alastair Gee and Dani Anguiano

    Narrated by T. Ryder Smith

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    The harrowing story of the most destructive American wildfire in a century.

    There is no precedent in postwar American history for the destruction of the town of Paradise, California. On November 8, 2018,
    the community of 27,000 people was swallowed by the ferocious Camp Fire, which razed virtually every home and killed at least 85
    people. The catastrophe seared the American imagination, taking the front page of every major national newspaper and top billing on
    the news networks. It displaced tens of thousands of people, yielding a refugee crisis that continues to unfold.

    Fire in Paradise is a dramatic and moving narrative of the disaster based on hundreds of in-depth interviews with residents,
    firefighters and police officers, and scientific experts. Alastair Gee and Dani Anguiano are California-based journalists who have
    reported on Paradise since the day the fire began. Together they reveal the heroics of the first responders, the miraculous escapes of
    those who got out of Paradise, and the horrors experienced by those who were trapped. Their accounts are intimate and unforgettable,
    including the local who left her home on foot as fire approached while her 82-year-old father stayed to battle it; the firefighter who
    drove into the heart of the inferno in his bulldozer; the police officer who switched on his body camera to record what he thought
    would be his final moments as the flames closed in; and the mother who, less than 12 hours after giving birth in the local hospital,
    thought she would die in the chaotic evacuation with her baby in her lap. Gee and Anguiano also explain the science of wildfires, write
    powerfully about the role of the power company PGE in the blaze, and describe the poignant efforts to raise Paradise from the ruins.

    This is the story of a town at the forefront of a devastating global shift—of a remarkable landscape sucked ever drier of moisture
    and becoming inhospitable even to trees, now dying in their tens of millions and turning to kindling. It is also the story of a lost
    community, one that epitomized a provincial, affordable kind of Californian existence that is increasingly unattainable. It is, finally, a
    story of a new kind of fire behavior that firefighters have never witnessed before and barely know how to handle. What happened in
    Paradise was unprecedented in America. Yet according to climate scientists and fire experts, it will surely happen again
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateMay 5, 2020
    ISBN9781980047940
    Fire in Paradise

    Related to Fire in Paradise

    Related audiobooks

    United States History For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      Ex-Deputy Who Stayed Outside During Parkland Shooting Getting $8,702 Monthly Pension

      May 17, 2018

      Parents of some of the 17 people killed in the February massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas in Florida are expressing outrage over the payments to Scot Peterson.

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      'The Cadaver King And The Country Dentist' Will Shake Your Faith In The US Justice System

      Feb 28, 2018

      The authors focus on the wrongful convictions of two black men, Levon Brooks and Kennedy Brewer, each charged in separate murders during the early 1990s in Mississippi.

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      An Anti-Racist Reading List

      Jun 4, 2020

      A list of recommended titles focused on the issues surrounding white supremacy and institutional racism, police brutality, mass incarceration, and anti-racist political activism. The post An Anti-Racist Reading List appeared first on The Millions.

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Everest Is Over

      Jun 5, 2019

      Everest Is Over
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Skanendowa Lodge

      Sep 19, 2024

      In its heyday, Skanendowa Lodge, a family compound of Adirondack cottages on Tupper Lake, drew high-society guests from Washington DC—writers, senators and presidents keen on escaping the sweltering summer in the city for the mountains. Marshall Shep

      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Property

      Apr 2, 2020

      The Property
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      My Oz trials

      Dec 14, 2022

      My Oz trials
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Photo That Stopped A Nation

      Nov 28, 2024

      The Photo That Stopped A Nation
      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Photo That Stopped A Nation

      Nov 28, 2024

      The Photo That Stopped A Nation
      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      At The End Of The Highway

      Feb 20, 2020

      At The End Of The Highway
      11 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Home From Home

      Aug 13, 2021

      A Home From Home
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Ghosts Of Festivals Past

      Aug 14, 2024

      IN our fields below the house, the combine has been working, harvesting the winter barley in glorious breezy sunshine. On adjoining pastures, a rubbish-gathering behemoth chases the crisp packets and a few inflated condoms left by 22,000 revellers ov

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Landscape & legend

      Sep 5, 2018

      BY KIRSTY MCKENZIE PHOTOGRAPHY KEN BRASS As a child, Widge Curtin remembers looking up at the twin peaks of Mounts Lidgbird and Gower that loomed over the landscape of her home on Lord Howe Island and marvelling at how amazing the world was. Given t

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Good Migrations

      Jun 23, 2022

      Good Migrations
      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Cut From The Same Cloth

      Sep 12, 2019

      Cut From The Same Cloth
      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Scrooge for Christmas

      Oct 4, 2022

      Scrooge for Christmas
      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Beacon Of Unity

      Nov 14, 2023

      Christmas is never so magical as when you’re a child. The stockings, the presents, the food, the sweets, the tree, the telly, and the rarity of “Can I stay up a bit later, pleeeeease” actually being answered in the affirmative. But as a child, I woul

      2 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Fire in Paradise

    4/5

    27 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      One of the best disaster books I've read/listened to. It's meticulously researched by skillful writers. With story after story centered on the human impact of the fire. This story isn't full of unnecessary fluff or backstory. It tells you exactly what you need to know before the fire and then you get right into the harrowing events & recovery. Each person's story is given respect and dignity. This book has no dull points and no points I'd wish to skip. It sets a high standard for other such books to follow.
    • 4/5
      So...having finished this the other evening, I went to bed thinking that maybe I'd just finished a book that was going to be a classic like Norman Maclean's "Young Men and Fire." The next day, I had to conclude that, no, as gripping as this work is, it's probably just journalism, not classic history. However, this is very good journalism, as the authors tell a poignant tale of the obliteration of a community, for which the chances of a worst-case scenario playing out was always high.That might be the lesson here. At the time of the "Camp" Fire, the coverage made me wonder what the people on the ground were thinking. This book is illustrative of how the local folks were not naive about their circumstances, but no one, outside of a few professional firefighters, were actually thinking in terms of what the the real worst-case scenario could look like. To be fair, very few people can think in those terms, as in the face of the worst-case scenario, you're just doomed. That the human toll was not worse is a tribute to the planning that was done, and the heroism of the first responders.As for the culpability of Pacific Gas & Electric, a running thread in this book, the authors don't push that to the hilt. However, as dubious as the past behavior of the corporate management might have been, the failure of their power lines is probably more a commentary on how while PG&E is too big to fail, it's also probably too big to really manage its assets. If one was going to be fair, obsolescent infrastructure inadequately maintained is a chronic problem in this country, exacerbated by sprawl.Finally, as I'm writing this, the community around Lake Tahoe has just been saved from the "Caldor" Fire; disasters like this remain a threat into the future of what is now looking like the "Pyrocline." A new age of fire birthed by massive climate change.