tamra fisher: can we please get out of here? larry laczko: tamra had her three dogs in the car with her. tamra fisher: it's 9 o'clock in the morning. larry laczko: she was recording the events on her cell phone. tamra fisher: i'm really scared. and i don't got that much gas! she was stressed that she was not making progress getting away from the fire. tamra fisher: come on! just go! i'm so scared! [honking horn] todd abel: these fires, it's very, very intense heat. ignite a tree without flame touching it. all at once, the tree lights up sort of like a roman candle. paul hessburg: and when a wildfire is really moving fast, it can burn five to 10 football fields in a second. it's millions of hot embers that can find so many places to ignite a fire. sometimes the winds are so strong that they are tossed up to five miles. brad elder: the drier it is outside, the probability of that ember is going to stay lit and the fuel that it lands in is approaching 100%. [police radio chatter] paul hessburg: paradise, california, burned from an e

tamra fisher: oh, my god. karen davis: and when we finally did get through, it was like an apocalypse. tamra fisher: oh, my gosh. it's like you're seeing this destruction that you only see in, like, movies. it's gone. larry laczko: it's gone. tamra fisher: it's gone. look, that house is gone. larry laczko: yep. tamra fisher: and that house is gone. and to see that devastation, it was surreal. yeah, my sister's just right up here. it's all gone. cindy christensen: our neighborhood, our house, there was nothing left. nothing. it was decimated. we lost everything, except for the clothes on our backs. nichole holly: the flames engulfed the hospital, and the roof collapsed. kory honea: it consumed 18,000 structures. 15,000 of those structures were homes, places where people lived. karen davis: and i learned. the next road up from where we were trapped, that's where five people died trying to run from the flames. 85 people lost their lives. there's nowhere you can go in butte county where you don't run into somebody