Rosa and Paul

Early October
Story collected by Tamara Yates and Barb Wright
Written by Tamara Yates

“We get by with a little help from our friends”

Rosa was working the day the Park Fire started. She manages both Super Cut stores in town and was in Chico on July 24, 2024.

“Jessie Montgomery called me at the store, or I called her, my mind isn’t still working right, anyway, she asked if I was evacuating, I didn’t know what she was talking about! What fire? Her nieces and nephews were visiting and were at her house. She said she was trying to get them and their stuff loaded to go. I said they could come up to our house. I decided to pick up some pizzas if the kids came over, so I went to WinCo. As I was checking out, everyone’s phone started ringing all around me, I looked at mine and then looked at the teller who was ringing me up. I looked at her, I don’t have any idea what came over me. I was just thinking I’ve got to get out of here. I was like, oh my God, I think that’s when I started panicking a little bit. I got goosebumps and asked her to just give me what she’d already rung up and put the rest back, I HAD TO GET HOME!”

Rosa then took what she’d managed to purchase out to her truck and loaded it up. At that point in time, she thought she should call her husband, Paul. He said, “Babe, Richard just left to go up there, I’m not sure you’re even going to get past the airport!” Rosa again had a surge of panic and decided to go up Highway 99 to Garner Road and then up Keefer Road to Cohasset Road.

“I turned onto Keefer and that was when all the Sheriff and police cars were screaming up the road with their sirens all turned on. It was after 4:30, I was freaked out by all the emergency vehicles and wondering if I was going to make it home! Soon I saw a red pickup truck that I sort of recognized, you know how you notice regular cars and trucks you see frequently going up and down Cohasset Road? I kept noticing the red truck was still following me and that was sort of comforting, you know?”

She just put her foot down and kept going. At one point she got through on her cell and spoke with one of her employees. This employee was a former victim of the Paradise Camp Fire. She now lived close to the end of Bidwell Park where the fire started. She was freaking out about the danger to her current house. Rosa asked her if she wanted to go home to be with her girls. Her employee said it was better that she stay at work as it distracted her, so she didn’t worry so much. She was watching the evacuation maps and things were still okay. She said her girls would stay at home. Rosa then realized she should be the one getting on home!

Rosa said, “When I finally got home my husband was there and already had his truck completely packed.

I had the big truck and honestly you know when they tell you what to pack? My mind just went WTF? I look around the house and just think I can live without all this STUFF if we get out ok. I ended up taking two big suitcases out of the closet that I thought I’d fill up. After packing what I thought I needed, they were both half empty. I remembered when my friends got caught in the Camp Fire, they kept talking about how they forgot work clothes, and so many things.”

So, Rosa went back and packed mostly work clothes. She routinely left her work shoes in her truck because she doesn’t like to wear them outside of the truck at home because of Cohasset’s red dirt. She remembered her friends saying they should have grabbed their dirty clothes because those were the clothes they wore most often; she thought that was brilliant. However, she had just done her laundry. It is amazing what the mind thinks of in an emergency.

I asked her if they’d had any “Go bags” packed for herself or her husband, or her animals. They hadn’t got to that yet. They’d been up here about two years.

Rosa said, “I took a box that I had all the mementos I’d kept from when my son was growing up, and of course, the stuff of my dad’s that I had.” Rosa’s father had only died two years ago, and she was very close to him. She was actually surprised how she was normally the one very organized in an emergency, telling everyone what to take, and what to do, but at this point she was feeling very lost.

Her husband stepped up and asked her if she’d packed blankets? Pillows? Did you get this, did you get that? Like it was his turn to guide the two of them. He then asked her; did you get a bottle (alcohol)?

Rosa answers, “A bottle?” Paul says, “Babe, where we are going to go, we are going to need more than one bottle!”

Rosa: “I am normally the joker, pushing to pack more liquor when we are going camping or whatever, so I grabbed two bottles one of tequila and one of vodka. He then asked me if I only grabbed two bottles.

So, he went back and got another armful. He had an ice chest packed with ice in his truck, so in it went.

I thought we were done except for packing the dogs up. He decided maybe we should empty the freezers in case the power went off. So, eventually we decided to get the freezers empty and take the food with us. We mostly got the frozen meats and stuff like that. I did not pack any of our frozen crops, tomatoes, lemons and jalapenos, we grow those three crops each year. Then I thought about all our condiments, etc and just started throwing everything in from the pantry. We didn’t pack plates or silverware or anything like that. Later we decided when this was over, we should make a box up with all that stuff in it because we go camping all the time.”

“We knew we would head up to my mom’s house up in Corning once we got out, so we also decided to pack toilet paper because hers isn’t very comfortable LOL. As we were starting to load the dogs, we got a call from Jessie asking us where the F#$k we were? They were leaving Mud Creek turning onto Cohasset heading down the hill already. She said GET OUT NOW! JUST GO! I said, ok we are coming and as we went to leave and shut the door our power went out, it was like a sign for us, time to go. As we got in the trucks, we were driving separately, I saw our neighbor, Allen started to leave with his trailer. I thought to myself, ok, we aren’t too late, we aren’t too far behind. As we headed down, I could still see

Allen ahead of us, but we had no communication, our cell phones had died. I kept telling myself, we are ok, we are ok, Allen knows more about this than we do.

As soon as we got down past the store, I started to see cars turning around, telling us to turn around and

I noticed Paul is not turning around, he’s not, he’s not! And I’m just like yelling Paul turn around, turn around and people are sticking their hands out, telling us to turn around. I can then see the barricade, the barricade! He was just going, going. Later he said he didn’t even see the barricade or the people telling us to turn around, he was just so focused on getting us out. Then before he actually got to the barricade he stopped, I knew that if he turned I’d turn and he found a driveway, I don’t even know which one it was, but there was room for both of us and another person to turn around, as I was turning I was able to see Paul, face to face, recognizing my husband, my life, he’s always the one that takes over, he’s like my bodyguard. In that moment as I looked at him, I knew I couldn’t lose it, I had to be there for him too in this moment. I couldn’t break down. But all I knew, and that he knew, was that this was theonly way out. I didn’t know about logging roads or thought I knew that you just couldn’t get out that way. I’ve only been here, here on Cohasset Road as the way down to Chico. We’d only been living up

here two years and we didn’t know any alternative. We just thought the roads were too horrible to use, or locked. I’m definitely not an off roader, my husband has had to get in and get me out of bad spots in the past. As soon as we got into the driveway, he said I could make the turn, there were two cars behind him. I didn’t think I could, we were so close to other cars, but we eventually made the turn around.

All I could think about was how the f#$k are we going to get out of here? We can’t go to Deer Creek, that would be a death trap. The dirt roads were horrible, maybe even with gates locked. One of the last women we saw as we turned around said go to the towers! We live up near the radio towers and we knew we were in the Evac zone, so how was that going to work? We had a caravan of about 40-50 cars headed up the hill. When we got to the radio towers there were even more cars parked right by our house. This wasn’t it. Then someone yelled that they meant the communication towers, not the radio towers. So, we get to the Big Towers, and I was hoping there would be somebody there in charge, someone who had lived here forever and really knew the actual way out. Then someone came over and said head to the helipad, they are going to send a helicopter to get us. Ok, I said what the hell, I need to remember who said that, who said that?

Then Paul pulls up beside me and says, ‘what do you want to do?’ I said I don’t want to wait for the helicopter, you know what they are going to do right? They’ll say women then children and they won’t let us take our dogs. I’m not going to leave you or the dogs, so we have to figure out what the fuck are we going to do? We have to have a plan. I’m trying to put my big girl panties on and be OK, all right, lets just go. We started driving to what we thought would be the helipad. We saw a small SUV, like a Subaru or a Jeep or something ahead of us. My husband gets out and the driver tells my husband that he’s been out these roads a bunch of times, but not in quite a few years. He’s an older gentleman and his wife is totally disabled there with him.

My husband came back and said he thought we should follow him; he’s been up here in Cohasset much longer than us and had been out the back way. So, I followed my husband, and he followed Tim (we found out later that was his name). We had a lot of stops and starts, and a few backtracks, it was really dark by this point with a lot of dust and smoke. “

Rosa and Paul and a couple other vehicles proceeded down the trail behind Tim. At one point Rosa got turned around and lost the taillights she was following; she realized what had happened and was able to turn back around and see Paul’s truck. She was driving as close to the edge of the mountain as there was a pretty steep drop off on the ledge side. At one point, going around a turn she hugged it a bit too close, and her truck got bumped and pushed out, but she was able to stay on the road.

Tim had stopped again, and Paul went up to talk with him. He was no longer sure they were going the right way because they were at the top of a turn that was headed steeply downhill. Paul was understandably upset and starting to panic a bit, asking Tim why he led them this way, he thought he knew the way. He told Tim that if he’d known he wasn’t sure maybe they could have worked on it together. Realizing they were pretty much in the middle of nowhere and had no idea where the fire was headed, they stopped and regrouped, ultimately deciding maybe they should head back up to the Helipad. As they turned around yet again Rosa high centered on a rock and Paul just kept telling her to just turn around. Rosa realized Paul was freaking out. Rosa told him he just needed to walk away and let her turn the truck around, which she ultimately did.Now Paul is leading their small group with Tim in the back. Paul almost immediately saw another group of people coming down the road toward them.

Rosa: “It was hard to turn around that last time, before it was a little light but now it was completely dark. You could hear the fire; you don’t know where it is or where it’s going but you could hear it and smell it. So, after we turned around, I saw a BUNCH of cars coming our way. I said, oh my God we were going the right way all the time! Paul said we needed to turn around quickly because we didn’t want to be at the end of the caravan if someone got stuck. Tim got turned around as well.”

It turned out Justin Autrey was leading that group. They thought he was the son of Jamey and therefore most likely knew where he was going. Tim recognized him as well, so they decided this was the right thing to do.

Rosa: “A Sheriff or Sierra Pacific guy said he’d opened the gates so we could all get out. He also said he had put logs on the crossroads NOT to take. That turned out to be really helpful because the correct way was clearly marked, and we were starting to feel like we were going to make it. We had been told two sheriffs had gotten lost, but they weren’t from this area, so we were ok. We were following each other, but you really couldn’t see much, the dust and smoke were so thick. But then you get through the whole f-ing road and all of a sudden, we reach 32 above Forest Ranch.”

“At that point someone in a uniform said you can’t head down 32, there is fire on both sides, and it’s blocked. But they were told they needed to have enough gas to get out the other way (uphill). They did, but others didn’t, and some folks said their cars weren’t working well and Tim said his had been making a funny noise. Paul got out and went to Tim to clear up any misunderstanding from before. I talked to him too and asked if they were alright. I wanted to give my dogs a little walk. I’d tried to give them water but the cup I’d put the water in was full of mud (I’d had to leave my windows open). We were standing around parked off the road and saw vehicles going in both directions, it was clear they were evacuating Forest Ranch. But then Paul saw a fuel truck heading downhill.”

Paul: “There’s no way they are going to let a fuel truck go through if there is fire blocking the road, let’s get in and go! Maybe we can get a cell signal as we go down the hill. I have a full fuel tank so we can always turn around.”

Rosa: “We saw a couple girls who said they really thought it was closed, so I told her, if we aren’t back in 30 minutes, you’ll know we got through. I jumped in my truck and off we went. When we got to the “roadblock” it was pure chaos. There were a lot of Police and Sheriff’s cars, it looked like they were focused on evacuating people, so we just went through, winding our way through the blocked traffic. I found out later that when my neighbor went down, he got stopped and told to turn around. I think we got through just because of the confusion, but it worked out for us.”

“We headed up to my mom’s house in Corning and were able to stay there for quite a while. After sitting around for awhile with a few drinks I told my husband that I’d loaded up our guns. I hadn’t told him that before because I didn’t want him to worry. I told him at one point I really thought I was going to die, and if it came to that I had planned on not letting the dogs suffer, shooting them and myself.”

Paul replied, “You weren’t going to die, you weren’t ever going to die up there.” Rosa laughed at him and said, “yeah, now you know because we didn’t.” Paul replied, “No I had a plan, I had a plan all along,if we got trapped, I was going to find a shallow spot, put you and the dogs in it under me. Then if the fire came you would have not died, it would have only gotten me.”