Every burned town is tragic. But Newsom needs to lead with science, not sentiment.
The people of Paradise have lost a lot—they lost their homes, their farms, their businesses, and their churches. They’ve lost their hope of something better to come. Maybe they lost hope for hope.
But they haven’t lost their way.
That’s what Mayor Jenny Sengstag wrote in her town’s Memorial Day blog.
There is an essential reason why Paradise is a special place, and that is that we are here because of our neighbors.
We are here because there are hundreds of people with nothing to lose who decided to share their lives with us.
This is a hard time for us, and sometimes life’s a struggle. We feel like everything is out of control. But what is out of control is the weather. And our faith is also in trouble. And our government is broken. And our health care is very low quality. But when our neighbors are down, we are not going to go down without a fight.
We will stay. We will come. We will work to help each other recover. We will build new lives together, because there’s nothing else we can do.
In this moment of our history, we have to stay together. To the end of the earth.
May the spirit of Paradise live on. I do not want to see the town burn.
That would be tragic.
A local man, who asked not to be identified, says he heard there has been a plan to burn Paradise for months.
“That is not good,” he says. “That is not good at all.”
“There is no better example,” he says. “The best example I can think of right now.”
He doesn’t know what he hopes to see when the time comes to burn Paradise.
But if “The Plan” is like his hope, it looks bleak from time
