Searching for paradise
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The last time Antonio Mays Sr. heard from his son, it was in a note the 16-year-old left in the family's garage. He told me he was going to make me proud. Antonio Jr. left home to join a protest in Seattle. A week later, he was shot and killed there. I need some arrest made, justice for my son. Listen to We Keep Us Safe on the Embedded podcast from NPR.
This is the TED Radio Hour. Each week, groundbreaking TED Talks. Our job now is to dream big. Delivered at TED conferences. To bring about the future we want to see. Around the world. To understand who we are. From those talks, we bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you. You just don't know what you're going to find. Challenge you. We truly have to ask ourselves, like, why is it noteworthy? And even change you. I literally feel like I'm a different person.
Yes.
Do you feel that way? Ideas worth spreading. From TED and NPR, I'm Manoush Zomorodi. And on the show today, Paradise Lost and Found. And for Richard and Zeta-Gore, Paradise is a real place. They found it, and they moved there in 2018.
We enjoyed the small town, lots of trees. and, you know, fresh air up above the valley.
We loved the house we had just picked out. We remodeled a few things on it, and it had just become the house of our dreams.
Paradise is Paradise, California, a town that at the time had about 26,000 people surrounded by dense, forest-covered canyon in the Sierra Nevada foothills. And with a name like Paradise...
There's a lot of jokes about it. You're now ascending into paradise. And when we go to our sons, we tell them we're now descending out of paradise to come down to the valley.
But then in November 2018, just seven months after the Gores moved into town, they got a phone call.
We'll never forget.
To this day, I remember looking out the window of our bedroom and noticing that it looked kind of overcast. And I said, that's strange. I don't recall it. you know, be in any clouds, but I didn't pay any attention. And then at about 7.45, our son called and said, did you know your town is on fire?
Just west, a faulty electrical line had started a small fire. That, combined with the bone-dry brush from California's ongoing drought, coaxed that small fire into a massive blaze that quickly descended on Paradise. But of course, the Gores didn't know any of this at the time.
We saw the sky. We saw the ashes. We were told that we should leave. But we didn't think it was urgent because we didn't see any flames at that time.
And we said, OK, we need to evacuate, but we'll be coming back. Our home will be fine.
Zeta and Richard packed up a few clothes and drove off. But they quickly hit gridlock and things got serious.
Then the wind started kicking up. That's when ashes are flying around and embers. Hard to breathe. Explosions are happening every minute or two.
And then people were saying, there's a house on fire just up the road. And we're then hitting us. Wow, this is going to be bad.
In a matter of a few hours, the entire town was inundated, and it was absolutely that feeling in our guts. We absolutely thought we were going to die, and we're both praying. And I said, look, we're not going to die sitting in our car in the road.
They pulled over and hiked down into a canyon. They ended up walking over a dozen miles to another town, where their son could finally come and pick them up. Richard and Zeta were exhausted, but fine. Their house, however, was not.
How did the Gores' move to Paradise, California turn into a wildfire evacuation story?
Nothing, no feeling compares to the feeling... About a week later when the sheriff escorted us up there to our property and we pulled up and got out of the cars and stood there at our burned out remains.
Couldn't hold back the tears.
Yeah, that was very emotional.
Paradise. The word evokes lush, abundant beauty, a refuge from harm. But is it futile to search for anything idyllic when we live on a warming planet that feels less at peace than ever? Today on the show, Paradise Lost and Found. Ideas about looking for utopia and coming to terms with reality. So back to Paradise, California. 18,000 structures were destroyed in 2018.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–4:14
2
How did the Gores' move to Paradise, California turn into a wildfire evacuation story?
4:14–12:08
3
What caused the 2018 Paradise megafire and how did it spread so fast?
12:08–39:03
4
What steps does Megafire Action recommend to make communities more fire‑adapted?
39:03–47:04
5
How can landscape management and Indigenous prescribed burns reduce megafire risk?
47:04–54:01
Speakers
9 identifiedMore from TED Radio Hour
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