EDITORIAL: It will take lots of effort to rebuild Paradise

Nov. 20--The statistics associated with the Camp Fire that destroyed the town of Paradise are as staggering as they are sad:

--151,000 acres burned, about 236 square miles or roughly 3 1/2 times the land area of Stockton, as of Monday afternoon.

--15,573 structures destroyed, including 11,713 residences, a number equal to about one in 10 single-family homes in Stockton.

--In its initial stages, the fire was driven by hot, dry, down-slope winds that allowed the blaze to consume, by some estimates, an area the size of a football field every second.

And these are just the physical costs. The financial costs of just fighting the blaze -- more than 5,600 firefighters and support personnel are involved -- will run into the tens of millions. The cost to insurance companies and homeowners likely will be in the hundreds of millions.

But the most horrific cost: the lives lost, the lives forever changed. As of this writing 79 people are known to have perished, many dying in their homes or vehicles either unable to escape or while trying to escape on the narrow, winding mountain roads. In terms of lives lost, the most costly fire in state history before the Camp Fire was the Griffith Park Fire in 1933, when 29 people died.

Some 699 people are unaccounted for. About 50,000 residents were displaced; of those some 1,000 remain in temporary shelters. Media reports over the weekend said more than 100 evacuees in shelters have come down with norovirus, a common cause of gastroenteritis, difficult to endure under the best circumstances. Horrible if your home now is a tent in a Chico parking lot; horror compounded if the winter storm forecast for later this week materializes.

And these are just the immediate horrors.

The sad truth is, a long, difficult and maddeningly frustrating road is ahead. For those who lost their homes, housing will be hard to find. Housing is always in short supply in California, but especially in rural areas. The ongoing demand, coupled with the destruction of thousands of homes in Paradise and the 100,000-acre fire also burning in Southern California, will drive prices even higher and create delays caused by a shortage of construction workers. And winter is coming.

We hope our shameful divisive politics and finger-pointing will not become a hindrance to the help our fellow Californians so desperately need. Unfortunately, too often what's past is prologue.

More than a year ago, thousands were displaced when fire swept the Santa Rosa area. Many residents there are still fighting insurance claims and the bureaucracy that is endemic in the wake of such disasters. Residents in New Jersey faced similar frustrations after Hurricane Sandy in 2012, and many in Puerto Rico remain without basic services more than a year after Hurricane Maria clawed across the island.

To be sure, there has been a genuine outpouring of concern and help for Paradise residents, most evident in Butte County itself but certainly not limited to those rural residents. Thousands of people have rushed to help, opening their hearts, in some cases their homes and in many cases their wallets to help.

That effort must be sustained. On Saturday, President Donald Trump flew to California to do what presidents do in such situations -- offer words of encouragement to fire victims, praise for first responders and a vow of long-term help.

A long-term effort will be required, not just to help those affected by the Paradise fire but for a comprehensive effort to better manage our forests. It will take a national conversation and a national effort. It will take years and it will cost hundreds of millions of dollars. We have done it before.

In 1927, the nation suffered its most destructive flood ever when 23,000 square miles of the Mississippi River Valley was submerged. Hundreds of thousands of people were displaced and about 250 died. Horrible as the Great Mississippi Flood was, it changed the national thinking about disaster relief. Americans realized we're all in this together.

We must never forget that lesson and must apply what the nation learned nine decades ago to help allow a return to Paradise.

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