President Donald Trump, Gov. Jerry Brown and Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom toured the Camp Fire area on Saturday.
Air Force One flew in to Beale Air Force Base east of Marysville, then the president and an entourage boarded helicopters to fly into to Chico. As the president’s motorcade departed Chico Municipal at 11:03 am., several dozen people lined the exit of the airport. Many waved U.S. flags and wore masks. The motorcade then headed up the Skyway to Paradise at 11:15 a.m.
“This is very sad to see,” Trump said at the Skyway Villa Mobile Home and RV Park. “As far as the lives are concerned, nobody knows quite yet. Nobody would have ever thought this could happen.”
The president and governor toured the burned area with Paradise Mayor Jody Jones. Also part of the motorcade were Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea and Paradise Police Chief Eric Reinbold.
Jones said she met Trump at the Chico Municipal Airport and they drove in separate cars on the way up the Skyway to Paradise. While she was not in the same car as the president, Jones said she managed to get in a few words with him when he first came off the helicopter and again as they toured the site.
“Mostly what he said was how sorry he was for all of our losses and he committed that the federal government was willing to help us,” Jones told the Enterprise-Record.
In Paradise, officials toured the fire-ravaged mobile home and RV park where not a single home was left standing, Jones said. They also took a drive through the business district so Trump could see it, she said.
“He said he couldn’t believe it,” Jones said. “It was unbelievable and that no one ever thought something like that would ever happen and that it was just devastation. He was just really blown away by how extensive the damage was.”
At the mobile home park, the president stopped in front of an American flag hanging from what was left of a burned structure. He walked between strewn, blackened ovens, a metal shelf with charred plant pots on top, and too many burned out cars to count.
Trump spoke briefly in the mobile home park, where all 55 homes were destroyed. He thanked law enforcement and elected officials.
“Jerry and I have been speaking, and Gavin and I have now gotten to know each other. We’re all going to work together and we’ll do a real job. But this is very sad to see,” Trump said.
“We have the greatest people in the world looking and helping,” Trump said. “Law enforcement, always. They never let us down. They never let us down.
“I don’t think we’ll have this again to this extent,” Trump said. “Hopefully this is going to be the last of these because this was a really, really bad one. Right now we want to take care of the people who have been so badly hurt. But we have incredible people doing the job.”
In response to a question on what needs to be done, Brown said, “What needs to be done is being done.”
The president visited the ruins of the mobile home park close to the home of Brad Weldon, who is one of the few holdouts in Paradise who fought the blaze instead of evacuating. Secret service swarmed his property before Trump arrived.
“It’s good he showed up,” Weldon said. “Not too many people have seen this much devastation in one place. He’s see hurricanes and tornadoes, but fires are different. There’s nothing left.”
“One thing that really touched me,” said Paradise’s mayor, “is that he said ‘we have to help these people because they’re my people.’”
She said he meant it “the way I mean it — that we’re all Americans.”
Jones told Trump “how thankful we were for the help we were getting and what a good job I thought FEMA was doing so far.”
The motorcade then traveled down to Chico and stopped at the Silver Dollar Fairgrounds, the base for firefighting operations.
“They’re out there fighting and they’re fighting like hell,” Trump said of the first responders. “It’s like total devastation.”
He described the fire as “still going very heavily. Very intense flame.”
“We’re looking for hundreds of people right now, literally hundreds,” Trump said. “And hopefully that’s going to be a good conclusion, not a bad conclusion.”
FEMA Director Brock Long told Trump, “This is probably the worst disaster that I’ve seen in my career.”
Asked whether climate change was a factor, Trump said: “I think you have a lot of factors.” He turned back to forest management. “Right now that seems to be a very big problem.”
Asked if the fire had changed his mind on climate change, Trump said: “No, no. I have a strong opinion. I want a great climate. I think we’re going to have that and I think we’re going to have forests that are really safe.”
Prelude to visit
In Paradise, about a half dozen Paradise police officers stood along the president’s motorcade route in town.
“It’s definitely a morale boost for the Paradise P.D. that’s been working nonstop,” said detective Gary Vrooman, who is one of only two Paradise police officers that live in the Paradise area whose home didn’t burn down. Seventeen lost theirs.
Aboard Air Force One, the White House press pool reported that Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R-Richvale, met with reporters on board about forest management.
“The president wants to get something done on this,” LaMalfa said. “We need to be a lot more aggressive.”
LaMalfa dismissed criticism of the president’s earlier tweet on forest management as having more to do with its timing and politics than the substance of the argument. He said that forest management does not mean clear cutting but rather thinning and creating buffers around populated areas.
“Without forest management, things can go wrong,” he said.
Before leaving Washington, Trump quickly talked to reporters.
“Many more people are missing than anyone thought possible,” he said, according to White House pool reporters. “I want to be with the firefighters and the FEMA first responders.”
Asked about forest management practices, which Trump criticized last weekend, he said: “Everybody now knows that this is what we have to be doing … It shoulda been done many years ago.”
The president added: “We will be talking about forest management. I’ve been saying that for a long time. It should have been a lot different situation. but the one thing is that everybody now knows that this is what we have to be doing, and there’s no question about it. It should have been done many years ago. But I think everybody’s on the right side. It’s a big issue, it’s a big issue, a very expensive issue, but very, very inexpensive when you compare it to even one of these horrible fires. And we’ll save a lot of lives.”
Fire concerns
Firefighters increased containment of the Camp Fire to 55 percent overnight, but high winds are expected over the weekend.
A red flag warning was issued by the National Weather Service through 4 p.m. Sunday that forecasts 15 mph winds from the east and northeast, with gusts up to 50 mph in the area of the fire.
Weather the last couple of days has been favorable. Control lines have been built directly on the burned area edge and some distance away from the fire. Those indirect lines are then backburned when possible to widen the barrier against the wildfire.
As of Saturday evening, the fire had killed 76 people. Three firefighters have been injured. The count of single-family homes destroyed was 9,700, with another 191 multi-family dwellings and 336 commercial buildings. The burned area is 149,000 acres.
Another 1,276 people are unaccounted for, but Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea warned the list is imprecise and “fluid.” It’s the result of calls that have come in to the Sheriff’s Office from concerned family members and friends.
Sixty-three of the dead have been tentatively identified.
On Saturday, Honea identified Lolene Rios, 56, of Paradise, as the sixth person to be positively identified and have next-of-kin notified.
Air quality is considered very unhealthy. People with heart or lung disease, older adults, and children should remain indoors and keep activity levels low, according to the Butte County Air Quality Management District. Everyone else should avoid all physical activity outdoors.
There was some improvement Saturday in air quality and that trend is expected to continue, although the overnight winds could affect that outlook.
Evacuations
Portions of the Cherokee evacuation zone, Highway 70 from Highway 149 north to Pentz Road, have been reduced to an evacuation warning.
Evacuation orders have also been reduced to warnings for the lower Clark Road and Messilla Valley evacuation zones. That includes Clark Road to Round Valley Ranch Road, Wheelock Road, Messilla Valley Road, and Pentz Road to Messilla Valley Road.
Durham-Pentz Road, from Highway 99 to Pentz Road will be reduced to an evacuation warning. Dry Creek Road from Messilla Valley Road remains under an evacuation order.
The area of Cherokee Road north from Table Mountain Boulevard to Red Tape Road has also been reduced to an evacuation warning.
All areas north of Cherokee Road and Red Tape Road remain under evacuation, including Louise Lane and Condor Road.
Cherokee Road and Oregon Gulch Road will be open to residents via Cherokee Road at Table Mountain Boulevard.
Highway 32 has been reopened as well.
Shelters
Meanwhile, a norovirus outbreak at shelters is making evacuees sick, and an unofficial evacuation camp that grew in the parking lot at the Chico Walmart is expected to close by Sunday.
The only shelters still accepting evacuees are at Bidwell Junior High School in Chico and Glenn County Fairgrounds in Orland. Evacuation centers at Neighborhood Church in Chico, Oroville Nazarene Church and fairgrounds in Gridley, Quincy and Yuba City are all full, according to Butte County.
A total of 46,031 people have been evacuated and 983 are being sheltered in evacuation centers.
Enterprise-Record reporters Bianca Quilantan, Steve Schoonover and Risa Johnson, Bay Area News Group reporter Julia Prodis Sulek and the White House press pool contributed to this report.
