Losing Paradise

By SETH SANDRONSKY

As I write, a light rain is falling in Paradise, Calif., population 27,000, about 90 miles north of my home in Sacramento. In a drought-wracked state, such precipitation is welcome, but too little and too late after the Camp Fire that began on Nov. 8 destroyed Paradise.

Amid the destruction, hundreds of people remain missing. Meanwhile, the Camp Fire death toll closed in on the century mark.

Water is life. Yet rain will make the discovery of human remains in the Camp Fire aftermath a steep hurdle for the search and rescue crews laboring against the odds.

What could well happen is that the rain will form with the ash and rubble to make mud. Runoff from the rain will simply carry away no small amount of detritus of burned businesses and homes that contain human remains.

Scores of Paradise residents in a hurried exodus for their lives during the Camp Fire had been living in tents on a Walmart parking lot in nearby Chico. They were the “lucky” ones forced to relocate or risk death and disease as the parking lot became a flood plain.

My sister’s friend lost her mother who lived in Paradise. I emailed a friend who lives in Chico and did not get a reply.

Ash and smoke from the Camp Fire closed all schools in the Sacramento Valley as the air quality index (AQI) climbed from unhealthy to very unhealthy then hazardous — the 300 mark. My eyes hurt. I coughed.

I awoke early on Nov. 16. Over a cup of coffee, I checked my phone and read of a 400 AQI in Sacramento. “Crazy” was the reply of Jeffrey St. Clair, Counterpunch editor, when I told him via email.

Climate change-fueled wildfires have become the “new normal” in the Golden State. Years of drought mixed with a rising amount of carbon emissions in the air from combustion engines are creating the conditions for conflagrations engulfing communities from the south of the state to the north.

Rare is the mainstream journalism that focuses on the petrochemical industry and its outsize role in disastrous wildfires. I read and watch local and national news daily and say without a doubt that the omission of that angle is usual.

What is next for addressing the social conditions that drive conflagrations? Clearly, the petrochemical industry will not abandon willingly its investments in Democrats and Republicans.

Movement politics during the 1960s changed the trajectories of Jim Crow laws and the Vietnam War. Later, both parties helped to destroy those movements via co-optation and oppression.

A revival of movement politics is to my mind where hope lies in these perilous times. Imagine the joining of movements of scapegoated minorities, gun-violence survivors and the sexually abused, plus climate justice proponents such as the Native tribes and allies who put their bodies on the line in Standing Rock against the Dakota Access Pipeline.

How to create movement politics for a society built on equity and sustainability is the challenge of our time. One thing is clear.

We do not have unlimited time to coalesce and make demands on government and the petrochemical industry it serves. Just ask the folks who used to live in Paradise.

Seth Sandronsky lives and works in Sacramento. He is a journalist and member of the Pacific Media Workers Guild. Email sethsandronsky@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, December 15, 2018

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