Huge Wildfire Stirs Up Pain in Fire-Weary Butte County — and Fury Toward Alleged Arsonist

Butte County residents have been here before. The area has seen significant blazes nearly every year since 2016, including the deadliest in California’s history.

Now, with the Park Fire burning out of control just west of the town of Paradise, which was leveled by the 2018 Camp Fire, thousands in Butte County are once again dealing with a dangerous and rapidly evolving situation.

About 4,000 people have been ordered to evacuate their homes in the rural woodland communities threatened by the wildfire, many of them landing in Chico — a city that’s no stranger to taking in those displaced by the fire.

“We have a lot of residents from Paradise here now living in Chico,” Chico Mayor Andrew Coolidge said. “It’s a hard moment for the city of Chico and the folks surrounding us.”

Coolidge said many Chico residents were prepared for this, welcoming evacuees into their homes in 2018.

“Chico is very good at taking folks from other towns during these kinds of times,” he said.

For Coolidge, the Park Fire is evoking painful personal memories. He lost his father in the Cascade Fire in 2017. Then-councilman Coolidge’s father, who was 78, lived in neighboring Yuba County and was one of four killed in the fire.

“We’ve become that community that understands the hardships of fire,” he said.

Sherry Alpers remembers the 2018 Camp Fire well.

“It was 11 miles from my house, so it was kind of close too,” she said Thursday at an evacuation center set up at Neighborhood Church of Chico.

Alpers and her dogs were evacuated from their home on Forest Ranch Road in Cohasset on Wednesday night.

“We were just at the grocery store, and we saw the fire on the way up, and the airplane was dropping the fire retardant on it,” she said. “And then, a couple hours later, we got a warning about an evacuation. So, I just grabbed the dogs and, took off and came back down. I think I was one of the first people that got here.”

Given the past few years of fire activity, Alpers said she’s not surprised by this latest blaze.

“It’s fire season, and people are stupid,” she said. “It’s really dry out there. You got to be careful.”

Arson investigators believe the blaze was started by a man who pushed a burning car into a gully in Chico’s upper Bidwell Park. Ronnie Dean Stout II, 42, of Chico, was arrested Thursday morning on suspicion of arson and is being held without bail in Butte County Jail.

“Everybody is just in complete awe,” Chico Councilmember Addison Winslow said.

“There’s only so many ways that you could create a public enemy worse than PG&E in our area,” he said, referring to the fact that one of the utility company’s transmission lines sparked the 2018 Camp Fire. “This guy really managed to take the cake on that one.”

Winslow said he’s concerned about the potential long-term ramifications of this fire after the Camp Fire left many residents homeless. Chico already lacks enough affordable housing for its residents, he said, and losing affordable homes in the foothills could supercharge the shortage.

“We have seen in the past enormous waves of secondary displacement following these fires,” Winslow said. “And my fear is that we’re going to enter into another such era right now.”

Winslow said he’s working with the city attorney to ensure protections are in place, especially protections against price gouging by hotels and landlords in the fire’s aftermath.

“There’s a lot of fear of what comes next,” he said.

For now, he said, he’s taking pride in how his community has stepped up to help its neighbors.

“I’m impressed. I’m proud. And I just have admiration for our own community, for the fact that people are so ready here to take care of people who are evacuating,” he said. “We are so used to it.”

KQED’s Sukey Lewis and Ezra David Romero contributed to this report.