Camp Fire Destruction

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lake52
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Camp Fire Destruction

Post by lake52 »

I'm sure many of you saw the devastating fire that continues to burn in the Butte County area outside of Chico. According to CalFire, the town of Paradise is basically gone. Paradise was a surprisingly large city with about 30,000 people. An absolute tragedy and I'm sure as the sun shines on the city tomorrow, things will only get worse. We can only hope that as many people as possible were able to get out, but it does not look good.

According to Facebook the SaveMart, Safeway, Kmart, and Holiday Market in town have all been destroyed. The SaveMart and Kmart just 8 hours ago were being used as shelters for those unable to escape from the blaze due to blocked highways. The only store I am unable to find confirmation on is the Grocery Outlet Bargain Market which was in the same center as Safeway. This is the second Northern California Kmart to be destroyed by wildfire in the past two years with the Santa Rosa store last year not being rebuilt. I don't think SaveMart has ever lost a store to wildfire.
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Re: Camp Fire Destruction

Post by rwsandiego »

Thank you for posting this update. In the nearly 17 years I lived in California I can't recall a wildfire that took out an entire town. This is terrible. I hope the people that were sheltering in the stores were taken to safety.
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Re: Camp Fire Destruction

Post by klkla »

That's terrible.

A lot of supermarkets impacted by the Woolsey fire here in Socal but none burned down as far as I know.

Current Mandatory evacuations:

- Entire city of Malibu, and areas south of 101 Freeway from Ventura County line to Las Virgenes / Malibu Cyn, southward to the ocean
- Entire community of Hidden Hills -- residents urged to take Valley Circle Blvd towards Chatsworth
- Liberty Canyon west to Decker Canyon and south all the way to Pacific Coast Highway
- Las Virgenes/Malibu Canyon on the east to Decker Canyon on the west all the way to Malibu at PCH
- All of Oak Park
- Bell Canyon: Saddlebow Road between Maverick Lane and Morgan Road
- Thousand Oaks Blvd. north to Sunset Hills, from Oak Park west to Highway 23
- South of Bard Lake, east of Highway 23
- West of Highway 23 - south of E. Olsen Road, north of Pederson Rd.
- South of Highway 101, east of Reino Rd., north of Potrero Rd., east to the L.A./Ventura County line
- Westlake Village
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Re: Camp Fire Destruction

Post by submariner »

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

If you or someone you know is in an area affected by the wildfires in Butte or Ventura counties, please monitor local TV and Radio stations for updates or the Twitter accounts of CalFire Butte County or Ventura County Fire.

Google maintains crisis maps for events like this, which can be an excellent resource to identify fire areas, road closures, and evacuation shelters.

Butte County:
Google Crisis Map:
https://google.org/crisismap/google.com/2018-camp-fire
CAL FIRE Butte County Twitter:
https://twitter.com/CALFIRE_ButteCo

Ventura County:
Google Crisis Map:
https://google.org/crisismap/google.com ... olsey-fire
VCFD Twitter:
https://twitter.com/VCFD
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Re: Camp Fire Destruction

Post by storewanderer »

rwsandiego wrote: November 9th, 2018, 11:13 am Thank you for posting this update. In the nearly 17 years I lived in California I can't recall a wildfire that took out an entire town. This is terrible. I hope the people that were sheltering in the stores were taken to safety.
Paradise was uniquely hilly and dense with trees, yet it was populated. When you drove around, it did not feel like a place with 30,000 people. It felt smaller. It is very tough to look at the pictures of this fire in action and the photos of various destroyed houses. I have never seen anything quite like this.

Not too far away from Paradise in recent years was that big scare about the Oroville Dam potentially failing and threatening that town, which is of a similar size. Luckily they were able to fix that before disaster struck, but that region has had some very hard luck in recent years.
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Re: Camp Fire Destruction

Post by klkla »

The San Francisco Chronicle has a photo gallery from the Camp Fire that shows what's left of the Safeway and Jack in the Box:

https://www.sfgate.com/california-wildf ... 377845.php
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Re: Camp Fire Destruction

Post by romleys »

I was happy to see they used my photo of the Safeway. It had a unique 1980s era facade and a very strange interior layout.
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Re: Camp Fire Destruction

Post by submariner »

romleys wrote:I was happy to see they used my photo of the Safeway. It had a unique 1980s era facade and a very strange interior layout.
I didn’t see that, where was it?


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Re: Camp Fire Destruction

Post by omnisuperstore »

Safeway sure has had some bad luck with fires lately. First the store in Phoenix in July, now this one in Paradise. Was this in the NorCal division? I saw on google that it had a very old decor.

Construction wise, I am guessing these grocery buildings in Paradise were not built like our grocery stores in the Midwest. It appears the roof trusses were engineered wood, which could be especially prone to collapse in even a weak fire, compared to the steel structure stores we build here in the Midwest. It’s very unusual for a fully sprinkled steel or concrete constructed retail store to burn to the ground here.

Thoughts?
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Re: Camp Fire Destruction

Post by storewanderer »

omnisuperstore wrote: November 11th, 2018, 6:39 pm Safeway sure has had some bad luck with fires lately. First the store in Phoenix in July, now this one in Paradise. Was this in the NorCal division? I saw on google that it had a very old decor.

Construction wise, I am guessing these grocery buildings in Paradise were not built like our grocery stores in the Midwest. It appears the roof trusses were engineered wood, which could be especially prone to collapse in even a weak fire, compared to the steel structure stores we build here in the Midwest. It’s very unusual for a fully sprinkled steel or concrete constructed retail store to burn to the ground here.

Thoughts?
The Paradise Safeway is NorCal and has been slated for replacement for quite some time. I think they actually have a site and approved plans at this time to relocate the current store. The layout of the Paradise Safeway was not weird at all if you were used to those late 70's and early 80's Safeways (or many currently still open Homeland Stores in Oklahoma), it was just one of those standard old layouts. There just aren't many in NorCal with that layout since the company has rebuilt, expanded, or replaced most of NorCal between now and 1988 when the common Safeway layout was developed.

I think the heavy use of wood was to make the stores blend in with the area.
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