‘It's hard to put myself in their shoes’: Local leaders, fire officials reflect on rebuilding after the Park Fire

One year ago, on July 24, 2024, the Park Fire ignited in Chico’s Bidwell Park, which quickly grew into the fourth-largest wildfire in state history.

It is also the largest wildfire started by arson. Officials say the fire started after Ronnie Dean Stout pushed a flaming car into a gully full of dry brush and fled. His trial is scheduled for November.

The Park Fire burned over 400,000 acres of land across Butte and Tehama counties before being contained two months later. It destroyed over 700 buildings, including 90% of homes in the small town of Cohasset, just north of Chico.

This week, officials said nearly all debris has been cleared out from properties that were affected by the wildfire, along with most of the hazardous trees.

This step paves the way for survivors to begin rebuilding, but the road to recovery remains long.

Doug Teeter is the Butte County District 5 Supervisor, which covers most of the northwestern part of the county including Cohasset. Originally from Los Angeles, Teeter grew up in Butte County and first took office in 2013. He also lost his home in Paradise during the 2018 Camp Fire.

Fire Chief Garrett Sjolund is with Cal Fire’s Butte County Unit, and has been with the department for almost 30 years. He was appointed chief of the Butte County Unit in 2022.

Teeter and Sjolund spoke with Insight Host Vicki Gonzalez about how the community is picking up the pieces after the Park Fire, and the lessons learned from battling multiple devastating wildfires that have burned across Butte County over the past decade.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Interview highlights

Supervisor Teeter, fire risk is a significant concern for your district and Butte County as a whole. How have you navigated these risks, and what has your personal experience been with wildfires?

It’s been really unfortunate… growing up here and seeing the natural beauty of Butte County get destroyed by uncontrolled, massive wildfires. Before, we always had evacuation[s]... Living in Paradise, just every summer it seemed like “hey, we might have to evacuate,” but [we] never had the actual event. 

But then came the Camp Fire, one of California’s most catastrophic and [deadliest] events… and then there was the Dixie Fire, the North Complex Fires, and then sadly the Park Fire. 

Tell us a little bit about the community of Cohasset, which is only 30 minutes away from Paradise? 

My original district, pre-Camp Fire, didn’t have Cohasset or the community of Forest Ranch. But due to the loss of homes in Paradise… my district had to expand to have an equal population.

If I was going to compare [Cohasset] to one of my long-standing communities, Stirling City, they’re kind of a small, rural community that’s very self-sufficient. People love living in larger parcels [with] fewer neighbors. I really appreciate that… they’re out there enjoying nature, and they kind of want to be left alone from government.

Given your personal experience of rebuilding after the Camp Fire, and your position as a county supervisor, what has the past year been like for Cohasset?

It's hard to put myself in their shoes even though I had a somewhat similar experience. I think  the difference was, the Camp Fire was big enough that FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) got involved. And for Cohasset and other areas that the Park Fire burned over, FEMA didn’t come into play and the state took a long time to ramp up a debris program. 

That delay was super frustrating to Cohasset folks. They couldn't get to their properties, there was no movement to get the EPA to make it safe so people could go to sift through the ashes. It was very emotional, people were very angry and upset. Then finally, the state pulled the trigger..

Now that we’re pretty much at 100% [of the] debris being removed, I think the ability to move forward is there for the citizens. 

The road to rebuilding can look very different, and that comes down to resources and support. This is also happening as wildfires continue to grow in size and devastation, including the Los Angeles wildfires earlier this year. What stands out to you about the varying degrees of response? 

Just from my experience, they base the requirement for support on the dollars that are lost. So even though the Park Fire was a large fire, it didn't have the same financial losses tied to it like the fires down in the LA area.

That, I think, is maybe something that could be changed in the future because it affects people the same. A person losing their home in a FEMA declared disaster is the same as a person losing their home in one that's not declared. It just seems like an injustice to those folks.

The Park Fire was started by arson. In terms of the emotional toll of recovering from a wildfire, does the cause matter?

I think that's a question maybe best left to the residents in the community. [In] my experience the Camp Fire was started by a corporation, PG&E, and the anger towards that organization was pretty extreme. I would imagine that folks [who] lost their homes or their lives, or even people with surviving structures… still have survivor’s guilt. 

That is an extremely hard thing to comprehend. Some guy starts his car on fire and pushes it into the bushes, what the hell was that person thinking? It’s just mind blowing.

The risk of wildfires has always been present, but Butte County has seen multiple major fires over the past decade. How have the magnitude of these fires shaped the culture in the communities you serve? 

I think there's two types of outcomes. Folks that want to live in the Wildland-Urban Interface such as Butte County's foothills come to now understand that defensible space is not just government overreach. I think they see extreme value in [having] fuels not next to their homes, and then making the changes to their homes that are recommended… home hardening.

But then, there's a large part of the population [for whom] one of the reasons they moved to the foothills was the low cost of living. They don't really have the disposable income to do those things. At least at the individual level it’s an understanding of why it's needed, but then there's the “haves” and the “have nots.”

Community-wise, I used to sit on our Fire Safe Council… I’ve seen that organization go from a handful of employees to a fully staffed machine. Funding for fuel reduction projects was very slim, and that’s starting to change. Just seeing the state’s investment in fuels reductions… and having the capacity to get those projects done, has been a major switch during my time as supervisor as a result of these megafires.

“It’s an event that we wish would not have happened”

Chief Sjolund, how are you reflecting on your experience battling the Park Fire?

It’s hard to believe that we just passed that one-year mark. It’s an event that we wish would not have happened again here in Butte County, but it did. I feel very proud of the preparation that we did prior to this event… and taking those lessons learned over the last seven, eight, 10 years of fires in Butte County, seeing them getting larger and more difficult to contain in those early stages.

Was the Park Fire similar to other wildfires that you’ve responded to, especially the bigger ones in recent years?

It had some similarities. We are familiar with the location it started… in the city of Chico's Upper Bidwell Park. Butte County has a very robust fire service model. It has a total of seven fire departments, six of those are cooperative agreements with Cal Fire specifically. Chico is separate [from] those, but we have a very strong response agreement. When this fire kicked off in Upper Bidwell Park, we assumed that there would be some challenges in containing this fire. We quickly positioned resources, and had resources respond to assist them.

That immediate response, recognizing the risk if that fire was to come out, was modeled by our leadership here in Butte County and [shown] threatening both Cohasset and Forest Ranch. I think our approach to this incident was done [rapidly] in a manner that we understood, and potentially saw happening here in the future.

There have been destructive and deadly wildfires in Butte County between 2018-2024. While you have many different responding agencies, I would imagine there is a significant fatigue factor for firefighters and crews. How do you get through that?

Absolutely, and we felt that in the 2018 Camp Fire. The grind… I was one of those individuals that was on for weeks, and then it turns into months. A lot of assistance comes from out of Butte County… we have a robust mutual aid system. But at some point they all go home, and we have to deal with the aftermath. We had 46 firefighters that directly lost their homes during the Camp Fire.

A fire crew working near the Park Fire, July 25, 2024.Courtesy of Cal Fire

It is challenging to look at… how do we move on from that point, and how do we do it better. One is the ability for folks to get R&R, rest and relaxation, and reset themselves so they’re ready to continue that model. We've looked at that 14-20 day timeframe of getting our individuals back, reset with their families, so we can reengage them.

We have an increase in staffing here in Butte County through a local measure. That increased our staffing levels on our county fire engines from two to three personnel daily. That is also going to help in the future. I think as we see these fires continuing to happen, as funding becomes available, and looking at the benefit of what we can do to help our employees… [that] is always something on my mind.

The Park Fire took two months to reach 100% containment. What does “containment” mean, or not mean?

In the fire service there's really two terms when we look at a wildland fire. One is “containment.” That means we have our arms around the fire and we are not anticipating any future growth. The next is what we consider “controlled,” and that means we don't anticipate any interior or exterior spot fires beginning. That can take, in these larger fires, weeks or months to do that.

As we look at a community such as Cohasset… one thing we learned and have unfortunately been able to practice in Butte County for all these large fires is the need to get on that repopulation plan really rapidly. How we get our folks back in there to start the grieving process,  to start the process towards recovery.

I’m happy to say that our coordination with the incident management teams as well as the local county electeds and the citizens, it happened a lot better this go-around. We have that understanding, and a lot of us have been through that so many times.

You are skilled at fire response, but a big part of your job is also prevention. The majority of wildfires are caused by unintentional human activity like a discarded cigarette or a chain sparking on asphalt. What can be done to prevent intentional acts like arson?

[We’ve been] trying to figure that out for decades. Understanding an individual that would go to this level, to commit a crime of this magnitude that not only impacts our watersheds but people’s lives and their property… I don’t understand it, and I’m probably not the professional to have that discussion.

But I will say we have looked at that here in Butte County. Accidental fire is still a leading cause here… but the number two cause is arson. I'm happy to say last year we had 29 arson arrests here in Butte County, and this year so far we have 23. We are out there, we have technology that we’re utilizing now to help apprehend these individuals, and see if they’ll see justice.

The last 10 years have had some of the most destructive and deadliest wildfires in state history, all in your backyard. The emotional and physical toll of your job is heavy, but why do you keep doing it?

It's a love, it’s a passion. I think any of us that enter into public service, whether law enforcement or fire, we're there for the greater cause. Our time here is a small snippet of the entire picture, but I enjoy being able to help people.

Devastation and [other] things happen that I wish would not, but I’m very proud of the fire department here in Cal Fire and Butte County for responding to these emergencies. Helping citizens throughout this recovery, prevention, what can we do better, and how can we serve them better is always on the forefront of my mind.

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