California town decimated by 2018 wildfire threatened again by state’s largest this year as fires plague Oregon and Canada

An evacuation warning has been issued for the town of Paradise, where residents say the smell of smoke and sight of advancing flames on the horizon is enough to retraumatize them with the same horrors unleashed by California’s deadliest wildfire in 2018, which incinerated much of the town.

As the Park Fire continues to rapidly grow and threaten thousands more acres of northern California, an evacuation warning has been issued for the town of Paradise, a place where people know the horrors of a raging wildfire all too well. In 2018, the deadliest wildfire in state history, the Camp Fire, incinerated much of the town. Three years later, the Dixie Fire burned nearby. And now, residents of Paradise say the smell of smoke is already enough to traumatize them anew. Paradise Mayor Ron Lassonde was visibly emotional as he told CNN affiliate KCRA it was “hard to talk about” the Park Fire as it brought back memories of 2018. “Every once in a while, we smell smoke or see smoke like that, it does trigger us. It triggers the people here in Paradise. When you go through trauma, that’s what happens,” Lassonde told KCRA. Ava Elsner, who lived through the fire six years ago, told CNN she fears for her neighbors as the Park Fire – now the seventh-largest wildfire in California history – burns nearby. “I don’t want anyone else to experience this. It’s the most traumatizing, terrifying, and saddening thing to have a whole community go up in flames, and to lose all your personal items … so to see my parents go through this is just really hard,” Elsner told CNN. “I want to stay strong for them and comfort them the way that they did for me. And it’s just, it’s just difficult.”