FEB 26, 2025
Story collected by E. Vegvary and Karyl Clark
Written by E. Vegvary

Sixty-six-year-old Julie Bos is a powerhouse of creative energy and can-do positivity. She embodies her personal motto of kindness, compassion, patience, and tolerance.

She lost her tiny house in the Park Fire.

She’s a volunteer Park Fire Disaster Case Manager, chairperson of the Park Fire Steering Committee. Previously, she was employed as a case manager for the Camp Fire.

We meet her in upper Cohasset, on the lovely meandering gravel road where she had been living since 2017, west of Cohasset Road. Two out of the five houses on this private road survived and there are green trees amongst the burnt landscape. In a small canyon a seasonal creek rushes and falls, creating a boisterous waterfall on Julie’s property. The sound is one of nature’s affirmation.

Julie tells us that seven months post-Park Fire she can now report that she has climbed back to her feet, emotionally and physically, and is ready to share her knowledge and expertise with her neighbors in Cohasset. She knows about monies and donated goods, she understands working with government and NGO officials, she is an expert at filling out seemingly endless reams of forms and writing successful grants.

She hopes to become a familiar face and a name for Cohasset victims of the Park Fire.

Slowly and steadily the post-Park Fire idea of “Stronger Together” is taking a discernible form in the decimated community of Cohasset. Monthly gatherings help to bring residents together. Meetings hosted by the Emergency Preparedness / Fire Safe Council committees are encouraging discussion and skill sharing. Potluck gatherings at the Cohasset Community Association are a return to the long-standing tradition of breaking bread as a community. The 4H Club, commodities distribution, and clothing closet continue to serve residents. An ad hoc group of pro-forest residents are raising their voices as one, encouraging activism for the trees and wildlife left to protect.

In February, Julie attended the potluck dinner and was quickly invited to speak to the community in her role as a disaster case manager at the EPC / FSC skills mixer the following weekend.

Julie talks about her property. “I lived in Chico. I had been in Chico since 1994. And I loved this area. My mother was an early childhood education specialist. She told me that I should go buy property and build a rope climbing park, like I love. I love rope climbing and ziplining.”

The extensive forest-themed climbing park was a labor of love and a work in progress. Five acres of swings, walking bridges, and tree houses, all destroyed.

She points far up to the top of the property, a gentle treed slope. “So that's where the rock wall was going. And the zip line. On the other part of the park that I had built, it had walking bridges everywhere. I had left the wall rock wall pieces and the rope zip line sitting there because I was going to put it up. It all burned up with the rest of it. I had a cabana, which led to a walkway that had a bouncing bridge on it, and the walkway went up and down and around like Fairytale Town would be, because that's what I grew up with in Roseville was Fairytale Town in Sacramento. And then it went to another tower which had a slide going down into a sand pit, and then it was leading to the final tower, all on sky walkways. I had fifteen swings. The surfboard swings survived. Round swings, square swings, seated swings, fifteen different types.” Julie’s goal was to provide something for all abilities.

“The Very Best Thing is the name of my park.”

Exuberance tumbles out of her as she speaks. “My mother told me everything was the very best thing my whole life. And I would get so frustrated with her, I'd be like, mom, not everything. Yes, it is, Julie. It's the very best thing. So, when she died, I bought the property right after.

“I love to build so I got my business license. The Very Best Thing. I build planters, coat racks, toy boxes, tables, these kind of tables. Okay, I salvage these and then I design and decorate them and sell them to people.”

She laughs, “I have six kids and twelve grandkids. I’m always busy. Did you know there's twenty-five mountains in our state that are 10,000 or close to 10,000ft? Well, I've climbed nineteen of them. I got my master's degree in social work, but I was an EMT first, and I was a lay midwife. I'm a certified massage therapist. I was a CNA. I have too many degrees. It's really terrible.” Her laughter is contagious.

“I was here the day of the fire. There was no smoke whatsoever. There was smoke on that side of the road, but there was none over here. So, I just started working on my planters and doing stuff. You know, they're going to get it out, right? And about 5:00, 5:30 this car came down the road flashing lights. You need to get out of here. Like they didn't know I was here, you know? And all of a sudden they found me here.

“I didn’t have Watch Duty or any app like that.

“I mean, I'd seen the fire, but I just I saw all the planes. I figured, you know, it was going to go out. I grabbed these four planters that I've been working on and stuck them in the back of my car and headed down the road. By the time I got to the road, there was nobody out there, nobody going down. It was pretty scary. It was very dark at the road, but not over here, you know, and I just slowly made my way down the road. And as soon as I got to the bottom, there was a couple cars that raced past me going up as I was going downhill, but I didn't really see anybody else.”

She scrolls through her phone, looking for photographs of her planters and toy boxes.

“I've been building stuff a long time. I build planters and toy boxes. And that's what I always put on them. Kindness, compassion, patience and tolerance. Because that's my true belief. We have to have kindness, compassion, patience and tolerance. For ourselves and all others. It's easy for me to give that to others but it's not always so easy for me to give it to myself. I'm kind of rough on myself.”

She thinks about what was destroyed in her tiny home. “I had some beautiful furniture my mother had left for me. You can't even buy that stuff. It's really pricey. Really expensive stuff she got when she was traveling the world. So irreplaceable. Irreplaceable stuff.

“I had a brand-new refrigerator here. I had just finished replacing my instant hot water heater. I was always doing work. I had six water tanks on the hill. I had all my plumbing, pretty much all. We had two trucks here and a car here that we lost.”

There is a terrible commonality with Park Fire survivors in Cohasset. Nearly every resident who evacuated on Wednesday thought they would be returning home on Thursday. The things lost in the fire because they were left behind are tragic. Those who evacuated on Thursday understood that the fire was a serious threat to life and property and had no time to pack anything other than themselves and their animals.

“I wasn't thinking that way at all, an evacuation, because I would have taken my tools. That was the other big thing that I lost. You know, had I known, you know, I would have secured a few more things before I left that day because that guy was like, you need to get out of here! But I could have grabbed some other things. I was not even feeling like it was going to burn down all the way. I just thought, yeah.”

“I just really felt like because of all the planes, I really thought, oh, they'll get it out. They'll get it out.”

This is a sentiment that is repeated over and over. Cohasset residents remain confused about the timeline of the fire’s progression, angry over the inability of CalFire and Chico Fire to stop the grassfire when it was set in Bidwell Park, and deeply regretful of the beloved possessions left behind.

*Courtesy Julie Bos. Thursday, July 25, 2024. 4:41 p.m. Cohasset is burning beneath this plume.*

“I got a message at five in the morning Friday that my place burned.”

Like so many, perhaps even the majority of Park Fire survivors, Julie was not insured. Her home was uninsurable. She opted out of the County’s ROE program that hands the debris removal process over to private contracted firms such as Tetra Tech. She’s been doing all the debris cleanup herself with the help of friends and family. Eighteen dump loads so far.

She was able to qualify for funds to pour a foundation for the new home she is planning on building. “We’re getting that area ready for my foundation to be poured. It's just been too wet.”

She points to various standing dead trees and then across the roadway to a growing pile of trees that have been cut down. “I still have these trees to get down. And it's impossible to take the trees down and get them moved over there in the mud. What we do is we cut them down, and then we cut them in sections and we haul them over there. One day, a friend came over to help me with his grappling machine, and he picked up and moved all the logs we already had over here. Over to that side. Yeah, and stacked them for me. But he hasn't been able to come back.

“I did not do ROE because I am a woodworker. I want my wood. If they would have said we'll take them down and leave them for you on this side of the road. I would have gladly have had them do it.”

The ROE program gets $1,100 in biomass credits per tree.

“I got rid of all my propane tanks. I took care of everything. Every metal, every piece of garbage that was here.” She shakes her head. “My curse in that is that they are making me pay for environmental soil samples. It's $3,100. Phase I has not been passed here yet. They’re making me do the soil samples their way.”

We begin walking the road that intersects her parcel. She points out various things on the property. Finally settling down on one of the surfboard swings that didn’t burn.

*Courtesy Julie Bos. One of her surfboard swings.*

She brings the conversation back to helping Park Fire victims. “What I'm trying to do now is guide other people who need things towards getting the funding they need.”

She’s adamant that securing funds and donated goods requires more than simply asking. There’s work that must be done first in order to move through the system and toward a successful result.

“I got two estimates for the foundation. I got two estimates for everything I want. And then you submit them to these foundations, and they'll give you the funding. Well, they will or maybe they won’t. There's no promises. You submit these estimates, and they say, okay, we will pay for that funding. But most people don't know how to do that for themselves. They don't know. You've got to have a w-9 for each one of those businesses before you can submit it. So, I am going to bring that up at our next meeting. How you can get the funding you need.”

We head back down to the tool shed she’s just finished building. She’s been doing her self-taught woodwork out of that space, still assembling her planters and toy boxes.

She starts again to discuss funding and donations. “I'm the chair of the Park Fire Steering Committee. This is a group of people that meet at the Lions Club made up of the Northern Valley Catholic social services, Saint Vincent de Paul, and the collaborative. There are many different organizations. We have these meetings and because I was a disaster case manager for the Camp Fire they decided to come up with the Park Fire Steering Committee. They called me and asked me to be the head chair, since they knew me and knew that my place had burned down up here.

“That’s how I became part of it. We just got started a few months ago. Saint Vincent de Paul started it. I was really happy that they started that. They asked me if I would go to the meetings up here in Cohasset and help assist people and help get people's names. I've given lots of names to Saint Vincent de Paul and Butte 211.

“I tell people, call if you haven't heard anything. Keep bugging people because then they call us and say, hey, these people are calling. That's why I said I need to have people do their own stuff.”

She wants to help the community to help themselves. This is an aspect of post-fire life that is unfamiliar to many – asking for help.

“I'm willing to help. I definitely want to help people, but I also need them to do their part. Like I said, two estimates. Get the W9. Give me everything. Then I would walk. What I would do is walk in the front door. If it was me asking of, say Saint Vincent de Paul, I would say, I really need this. I was in the Park Fire. You have to have all your documents proving that you live there. And then they go, okay, we could approve that. They take it to the Unmet Needs Funding Agency. And that's how you get the funds.

“It’s a matter of you being your own disaster case manager. What I'm saying here is that I might have to help people be their own. Because that's what I did.”

Her final thoughts are focused entirely on Cohasset, the community. “There have been so many fires, unfortunately. And the Park fire wasn't big enough to get any federal funding, as we know. There just there's been very little support and very little help. And yet this is the most amazing, wonderful community I've ever lived in. You know, I really feel horrible that the focus is on LA now. And I’m not saying their loss is any different than our loss, because there's a lot of people who lost their homes there.

“But our community is a strong community, and we want to continue showing Butte County that we like our own small community spaces, and we like having our own events, and we want to keep all of that. We want to rebuild the way it was before, but there is no financial support.”

She pauses, “That's what I know for sure in my heart. I'm trying not to go to all the other places that infuriate you and infuriate me.

“Kindness, compassion, patience, and tolerance,” she reminds, with a smile.

Julie

Jonathan