Wion News
Luanne Wright was all set for retirement when the deadliest wildfire in California history swept through her town of Paradise. The blaze incinerated her home, her car and even the chickens in her backyard.
Now Wright is spending days leading up to Christmas with her husband and daughter on adjacent cots in a Red Cross refugee centre in nearby Chico, desperately searching for somewhere to live.
Her husband is recovering from a heart attack suffered at a previous shelter.
“We were comfortable, we were happy, and now we have an acre of burned land and nowhere to go,” she said. “Everything is gone.”
The so-called Camp Fire broke out in early November in Butte County, killing at least 86 people and burning 14,000 homes in the tree-blanketed Sierra Nevada foothills of northern California.
Insurance claims have already topped $7 billion, and officials estimate it will cost at least $3 billion just to clear the charred debris of homes and businesses.
A few feet away in the Silver Dollar Fairgrounds, where about 700 people are living in tents, camper vans and a giant exhibition hall, Rubi Solis watches over four children, four dogs and a cat.
Solis didn’t know her estranged husband had stopped paying the insurance premiums months ago on her house in the tiny community of Concow, leaving her without coverage.
Her house was worth $200,000. The government gave her $34,900 to rebuild —enough, she says, to just about cover the cost of a new kitchen.
Her children have no school to attend. The youngest, aged four, got so stressed she started slurring her words.
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