The Miller NEW Normal

WHAT TODAY’S WILDFIRES TELL US ABOUT OUR FUTURE

- by Jeanne Miller

“Just a heads-up—there’s a huge plume of smoke and it doesn’t look good.” Dacia Williams’ mom was phoning from her car. She had just taken Williams’ nine-year-old son, Dominic, to school. It was November 8, 2018, and Williams was at home with her 11-year-old son, Anthony. He had a fever and couldn't go to school. Their house was in Magalia, California, a few miles up the hill from her mother’s home in Paradise.

LEAVING PARADISE

Williams was used to seeing smoke. Where she lived, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, she could see for miles. In the prior 20 years, about a dozen wildfires had burned in this dry, windy area of Northern California. She'd had to evacuate many times.

She and Anthony started packing things to bring with them, just in case. Then they walked out onto the deck. “That’s when we saw ash falling. The clouds were nothing like I've ever seen,” Williams recalls. They'd been close to wildfires before, but this was different. “Anthony looked at me and was like, ‘We gotta get outta here,’ and I’m like, ‘Agreed.’” They grabbed their backpacks and their puppy and got in the car. They headed for Chico, 20 miles (32 kilometers) away, where the boys go to school.

There were no other cars on Skyway Road when they started out. Then, traffic slowed to a halt in Paradise. What they didn’t know was that Skyway Road was blocked, for miles and miles ahead, with abandoned cars, burned cars, downed trees, and other debris.