Would You Rebuild?

Paradise is a word associated with a pleasant location. Maybe someone arrived decades ago in such a location out west, took in the peaceful surroundings, breathed in clean crisp air while viewing picturesque mountain scenery and referred to that setting as paradise.

That scenario is one of several legends relating to the naming of Paradise, California. Most of the 26,000-plus residents probably felt they truly lived in paradise, a noun defined by my dictionary app as “a place of extreme beauty, delight and happiness.”  Paradise also means “heaven.”

A few weeks ago, however, the town of Paradise became hell as one of several California fires roared through town forcing the entire population to evacuate the inferno.

The fire eventually destroyed the entire town. All of it. Think about this: 14,000 homes burned to the grown. Fourteen thousand!  It’s hard to picture that many homes. Even harder to visualize all of them gone. Crumbled brick, twisted metal pipes, mounds of ash, crisscrossed by concrete streets dotted by burned out car carcasses.

Twenty-six thousand people with no home to return to. Try to visualize 26,000 individual people. That is approximately the seating capacity for Jiffy Lube Live, an outdoor concert venue a few miles outside of Washington DC. Visualize the entire crowd at a sold out Jimmy Buffett show having no home to return to.

That’s more people than the crowd at a Nicks game at Madison Square Garden or a Lakers game at Staples Center.

As of the day I’m writing this, the fire is 95% contained, thanks to the heroic measures of thousands of firefighters combined with some much-needed rain. It is still not safe to return, however, so most those people still have not witnessed their nightmare.

Many Paradise townspeople have boldly stated during interviews that they plan to return and plan to rebuild.

Would you?