"I've never seen the sky so thick with smoke."

Nothing remains of the Ridgewood Mobile Home Park

By Nick Baumann and Samantha Storey

HuffPost's Jena Hatch, a reporter from Sacramento, is on the ground in California this week covering the Camp fire, which has quickly become the most destructive fire in the state's history. Some of the refugees Hatch is talking to she's known for years; others she's meeting for the first time. She's there with photographer Cayce Clifford, whose work you can see above and in Hatch's stories. We asked Hatch about the trip.

What's it like out there? What have you been most surprised by?

It’s hazy, difficult to breath, and I have never seen the sky so thick with smoke.

I’ve been most surprised by the scope of people affected. We are all getting updated daily with the number of folks affected — bodies found, structures destroyed and people missing. The numbers get higher every day. It’s one thing to see those numbers on a screen and it’s entirely another to see displaced people sleeping on cots in churches or in tents in parking lots. It’s devastating, the amount of people who are virtually homeless and left with nothing.

Why did this happen? Could it have been prevented?

Butte County hasn’t announced an official cause yet. Many people suspect that it was some combination of faulty, sparking PG&E power lines and strong, dry winds that picked up dry leaves, pine needles and other fuel.

I think as law enforcement and Cal Fire continue to assess the cause, we’ll see how big a role PG&E played. The town of Paradise, which has basically been wiped out completely, also arguably wasn’t prepared for a fire of this scope. There are more than 25,000 residents and only two ways out — not to mention the other thousands of folks in neighboring towns.

Whether or not PG&E’s faulty lines caused the fire, the town’s infrastructure wasn’t sufficient for an evacuation of that many people that needed to happen so quickly.

We also know that climate change is the driving force behind these increasingly powerful and destructive fires, despite Trump’s pleas to “make America rake again.”

Is there any prospect of rebuilding Paradise? Should it be rebuilt?

City officials, and former residents, are already saying that for Paradise to be rebuilt, the infrastructure needs an overhaul. Several thousand people are also planning to leave permanently. Many have family throughout the state and country who are taking them in. Many of them are retirees who may not want to continue hopping around from place to place.

Paradise will probably never look like it did before the Camp fire destroyed it. The process of rebuilding is going to be long and expensive.

What do you want readers to take away?

Floods and hurricanes tend to get the most attention when we talk about climate change and natural disaster, but the Camp fire needs to be acknowledged for what it is: one of the worst, most destructive environmental catastrophes in the state’s history, and probably the country’s.

A FEMA representative I spoke to today, who’s worked there for nine years, said that this was the most destructive and far-reaching disaster she’s seen. A Vietnam veteran who escaped with his cat from the flames behind his home in Paradise said that what he saw, and what he escaped, is up there with his worst war memories.

The road to recovery — financial and material recovery but also psychological and emotional recovery — is going to be a long, difficult endeavor.

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