Seven TNSAR members journeyed to Paradise to assist in finding remains of victims of the Camp Fire; Matt Jacobs was on the overhead team and doing a great job as usual. There were still about 150 people unaccounted for and we were given 8 homes that were considered high probability because missing people had lived there.

After fire personnel cleared a property as safe to enter we would comb through the remains of the structure looking for anything that might have been a person. In most cases the entire house was now dust, tile, pieces of sheet rock and appliances in a pile on the ground in the crawl space and we would dig down to where we encountered dirt in a coarse probe pattern to clear an area. One structure had been a 2 story apartment building and in this case the whole second floor was resting on top of the first floor and the concrete floor pieces from above had to be removed to get to the rubble below.

We did not find any human remains. We did find one live, terrified cat hunkered down under the front seat of a burned out Chevy truck and we got it out and took it to the command post after calling its owner.

The damage in the area was horrific - entire neighborhoods reduced to ashes with an occasional unscathed house or car in the middle as a surreal reminder of what it once looked like. We probably drove by 400 destroyed homes during the day and the total toll is now at about 7400 so the scope is almost unimaginable. 3/4 of the businesses along the main drag are destroyed - Safeway, McDonalds, churches, post offices - one wonders how the town of 23,000 can rebuild.