feather canyon retirement vs sunshine manor

The only thing still standing was his wheelchair, near the back fence with the garden hose.īy then a separate fire about a mile away had destroyed the log cabin built by Richard Brown, the unofficial mayor of Concow, a Vietnam veteran whose mom and stepdad had a winery in Paradise - which is how he came to name his daughter, Chardonnay Telly. His remains were found in the ashes of his house. A CalFire simulation shows that by 9 a.m., flames had overtaken Green Forest Lane, where Huff lived. Soon after the family’s call at 7:15 that morning, the house phone went dead. “He was putting out the flames in his backyard in his wheelchair,” she said. “We told him, ‘You need to evacuate now,’” said his granddaughter Jordan Huff, 22, who lived in Paradise. When the fire arrived, just after sunrise, Huff’s instinct was to save his house. Huff was stoic and strong, a farm laborer who worked in the fields his whole life he lost a leg in a potato harvesting accident in 2001 but didn’t let his disability hold him back, said his daughter-in-law Pearl Lankford, whose own house in Paradise burned down along with the homes of eight family members. With no internet or cell reception, the focus was always on family. But this was the house where three generations gathered for Easter egg hunts, for Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners, and pretty much every weekend of the year. Their house, high on a wooded ridge, burned down in 2008. Huff and his wife, Margaret, who died in August, knew the risk of wildfires. Wind gusts of at least 50 mph blew hot embers a mile or more, creating multiple fires at once and igniting areas the size of football fields every few seconds, said CalFire spokesman Scott McLean. This was no ordinary fire, with fronts marching steadily forward. The flames spread through the back of Concow, where Huff lived. in the tiny town of Pulga would become the nation’s deadliest and most destructive wildfire in more than a century. How they lived, how they died.Īnd how a fire that started at 6:30 a.m. One hundred days later - with the aid of public records showing the locations of victims’ deaths, CalFire mapping of the fire’s progression and dozens of interviews - their stories can be told. The oldest was 99 of the 73 bodies that have been identified, 59 were 65 or older. Nearly 14,000 homes were incinerated.Īll told, 85 people would perish. An entire town was burned off the map of California. It was just the start of a day that was almost unfathomable. On the edge of neighboring Paradise, a blaze prompted the Feather Canyon Retirement Community to evacuate its residents - all except 88-year-old Julian Binstock, overlooked in the chaos. But he never made it out.Īll around, fires were breaking out, and men and women - most of them elderly, many of them disabled - were doomed: Flames soon overtook 74-year-old Richard Brown’s beloved log cabin in the Sierra Nevada foothills. When his family called at 7:15 a.m., Huff said he would leave. The 71-year-old amputee sat in his wheelchair, pointing a garden hose at what quickly became the deadliest wildfire in California history. On that frantic morning, TK Huff was calm. She and her husband, Lou Herrera, 86, died in their house of a quarter century, amid the ashes of trees that provided fruit for Dorothy’s delicious pies. On the eastern edge of Paradise, Herrera had already left a frantic voicemail for her son, Arthur Lee: 'There's a fire, we've got to get out!' But by the time he called back, there was no answer. 1, 2018, photo provided by Arthur Lee shows his mother, Dorothy Lee Herrera, on her 93rd birthday in Chico, Calif.

Feather canyon retirement vs sunshine manor