美国国家公共电台 NPR More Than 1,000 Families Still Searching For Homes 6 Months After The Camp Fire（在线收听）

More Than 1,000 Families Still Searching For Homes 6 Months After The Camp Fire

作者：未知 来源：美国国家公共电台 2019-05-09

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DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Today marks six months since the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in the United States in more than a century. It was the Camp Fire, and it destroyed most of the Northern California town of Paradise and also a couple of nearby communities. That fire claimed 85 lives. And NPR's Kirk Siegler is here. He has spent the last six months reporting on the recovery in and around Paradise, even living in the area for a while. And, Kirk, I guess the big question is, how are people doing there?

KIRK SIEGLER, BYLINE: Well, you know, David, what's most striking to me is that Paradise just doesn't look or even feel that much different than when we were up there covering the actual wildfire in November. It's still very stressed. The people who are left, they're still trying to remove all of the debris; just a fraction of it has even been removed out of the town. So you see rubble everywhere still, collapsed shopping centers, neighborhoods leveled, houses in ruin.

And, you know, folks will feel like they've turned a corner, and then there's word of a new crisis. We're now learning that it may take years for the drinking water to even be safe. But if there's one big consistent through all of this disaster, it's been the fact that there just isn't enough housing for victims of the fire. There's no housing.

GREENE: Well, wasn't that already the case? Like, people had moved to Paradise because it was one of the only places in this entire region with affordable housing.

SIEGLER: Exactly. Certainly some people moved up there because they like the rural lifestyle. But a lot of people live there because it was the only affordable place. And many people were already living on the edge economically even before this disaster.

GREENE: And so you've reported that some people have been able to leave if they had the means to do it. But a lot of people just had no option. They've had to just stay.

SIEGLER: Yeah. And you get the feeling that, those who are left, all they've got is each other. This is a deeply traumatized community. I want to introduce you to a guy named Steven Murray. Let me take you there now as we're in his pickup, pulling up to a storage unit outside of Paradise.

STEPHEN MURRAY: Right now, we are going to my storage. We're going to unload a bed. We're going to see what things I can grab for some Camp Fire survivors.

SIEGLER: Stephen Murray is 43 with buzzed hair, a neatly trimmed goatee and tattoos covering most of his arms.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOOR OPENING)

SIEGLER: His storage unit is crammed with donated sleeping bags, work boots, knitted hats, boxes of gift cards and now a couple mattresses. He's hoisting them out of the bed of his pickup.

MURRAY: I don't know what I'm doing. I just know that people need me and need the support. And they need to see a smiling face every day and that's what I try to give them.

SIEGLER: It seems like everyone knows Murray. In the morning, he wakes up to dozens of texts from desperate people who need help. He tries to prioritize the asks he knows he can deliver on in any given day. He goes on Facebook at least once a day. In this live post, he's outside a Home Depot asking for help for a Camp Fire survivor who has severe burns.

(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO)

MURRAY: Someone helped her get a house. She's in a wheelchair. I'm going to go look about building her ramp. If anybody out there has anything that can involve her having her...

SIEGLER: He told me he relies on donations from GoFundMe pages for survivors.

MURRAY: It's not like we were given a book. Hey, when your house burns down, you lose your car and your job - what to do. So we're just kind of planning every day as it goes.

SIEGLER: Today, it's a Costco run to buy dozens of fans. Tomorrow, he'll help a former neighbor who's moving to a camper up to Oregon.

MURRAY: It's mind-blowing how some of these people are surviving and trying to get through life right now. And I'm one of them.

SIEGLER: Murray and his young family, two little kids and his fiancee, are sleeping on one king mattress in an RV parked in a friend's pasture north of Chico. In fact, it's clear that helping others is how he's handling the stress of his own personal crisis.

MURRAY: We've got to work together. Negativity is not going to help nobody and it's out there. You know, you got a lot of depressed people that if they just worked together, they'll get a lot more accomplished as a team than individually.

SIEGLER: FEMA says there are about a thousand families here who still need even just temporary housing and that number could be higher. Some people were living off the grid in the Sierra Foothills or in trailers in someone's yard or renting a room in a house off the books - none of those would easily qualify for official disaster aid. And these are the folks Murray is most concerned about.

DOMINICA SPRAGUE: (Laughter).

SIEGLER: An hour drive south of Chico, Dominica Sprague and her family could be counted in this crowd. They're now camped at the Fairgrounds in Yuba City. It's 750 bucks a month to park their RV here and use the showers. She tears up. It's the sixth place they've moved since the fire.

SPRAGUE: I don't know how to describe it other than complete chaos.

SIEGLER: Now, to hear her tell it, folks around here are getting compassion fatigue toward Camp Fire survivors. There's a lot of price gouging. Most RV parks don't let you stay more than a few weeks at a time.

SPRAGUE: I don't want a handout. None of us want a handout. But this has made it so impossible for anybody to survive, especially when you're on a fixed income. And we live on Social Security.

SIEGLER: She's hoping to move to Arkansas. She's got family there and maybe a job. California is just too expensive. And there's nothing to rent, let alone something that's affordable.

SPRAGUE: There's no place here to go. We were looking at parking on the side of the street with a bunch of other homeless.

SIEGLER: There was already a severe housing shortage and growing homelessness crisis in rural Northern California even before the Camp Fire. For Ed Mayer, the executive director of the Butte County Housing Authority, this disaster peeled back the band aid, exposing just how vulnerable these communities are.

ED MAYER: We've really lost our ability to produce housing that is affordable to our citizenry, and this is the larger tragedy.

GREENE: The larger tragedy - that voice in a story from NPR's Kirk Siegler, who's still in the studio with me. What does he mean there, larger tragedy, Kirk?

SIEGLER: Well, David, he's talking - we've backed ourselves into a corner because there's not enough affordable housing in this country right now. And so many people are being forced to live in these high-risk places - be they high wildfire risk zones or flooded areas or flood-prone areas. And, you know, Paradise is just the latest example of this.

GREENE: I mean, this town was all but destroyed. Could this be a game changer when people start rethinking about all of this, our housing situation, how we respond to disasters?

SIEGLER: Well, that's actually the subject of our next reporting mission. What we're going to try to find out next is look at what is out of whack with how we respond to disasters like this and what needs to change. And I think a lot of communities are watching with worry what's happened in Paradise and thinking it could have just as easily been them or it may be them next.

GREENE: NPR's Kirk Siegler here at NPR West with me. Kirk, thanks.

SIEGLER: Thank you.