Fire In Paradise
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Fire In Paradise
Directed by: Zackary Canepari
Drea Cooper
Starring:
Joy Beeson
Beth Bowersox
Abbie DavisHiyori Kon
Released: November 1, 2019 (Netflix)
Budget: No Info
Box Office: No Info
Ratings: IMDb 7.4/10 Rotten Tomatoes 83%
Metacritic NONE Google Users 74%
Fire in Paradise premiered at the 2019 Telluride Film Festival. It also showed at the 2019 Hamptons International Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award for Best Short Film.
First time you saw the movie?
Plot:
The film opens with shots of a tranqual forest, and Paradise, California, population 26,561, cut in with home videos of people doing day-to-day activites, while a voice over gives a safety alert for fire conditions. PG&E could cut power for safety. Nov 8, 2018, 6:16am, Ray Johnson, wearing a firefighter shirt, says the news stated it was going to be windy day, and could produce fires. So he stationed himself at the water tender at Station 33, and that he felt the day didn't feel right. Cut to a call center and a woman stating that night shift is 7pm to 7am and that it was quiet that night. Beth Bowersox said a call came in around 5:30am that her supervisor took, from a PG&E employee, about a Pulga Fire. Dacia Wiliams describes laying in bed with her kid, and her mom had taken other children to school, and said they saw smoke. 7:16am, 911 calls are played about the Pulga fire. Fire fighter Sean Norman speaks about hearing calls about a fire, and how he had to get on the road to come help. Beth dispatched the fighers and named it "The Campfire" due to regulations and guidelines...and how it seemed like a normal fire, at first, but her faces drops and follows with, "it got bad, real quick." As we see video of fires and power lines. 7:19am. Driving through town, Mary Ludwig speaks about getting to school and the frenzy it was in, and how quickly the sky turned orange. Sgt. Rob Nichols talks about meeting with his partner, in their car with Ash raining down. 7:29am, calls of smoke everywhere. Beth says it still seems normal for a fire, and more calls play of people reporting smoke and fire, and are told to evacuate. Beth states a co-worker took a call for a house fire in Paradise, and she is suprised. 7:41am: the 911 call for paradise plays. 7:45 minutes start counting up and more 911 calls play of paradise residents calling in fires.
S:
-I remember hearing about this fire, but to see people who live there talk about it, its obviously very dramatic.
Ofc. Nichols speaks about a spot fire in the middle of town. Cut to a house burning wildly, and flames shooting everywhere with a woman talking about her house being on fire. Dacia speaks about getting stuck in traffic; and waiting over 40 minutes, and that it's not normal. Video of a man and dog waiting in traffic. Ray talks about seeing the ploom of smoke coming at him and how eerie it was, like a monster. Cut to a shot of the smoke, and it is massive. Rays wife Jennifer talks about evacuating and seeing all her neighbors and friends around her, trying to get out, and how unreal it is. Mary speaks about kids being outside and the wind being so strong, branches were falling on fire. The kids are then evacuated on the school bus. Abbie Davis, a teacher, talks about getting on the evac bus with the kids. Mary was scared about getting on the bus with the kids, and even said she didn't want to, but did. And how the first corner they hit, there was fire and they were stuck in treaffic. Cut to video of people driving surrounded by everything on fire. Abbie speaking about being next to McDonalds and it caught on fire. And then it went completely black. Ray talks about his wife scraming and crying, cut over someone filming trying to calm people down surrounded by fire. Madeline Johnson, Ray and Jennifers daughter, talks about trying to stay calm, and being fucking brave, that she wasn't going to die. As Naoh, her brother, talks about praying, all this while showing film of someones car having flaming branches fall on it with someone scraming, and flames all over the road. More 911 calls and Beth telling people to get out, that they don't have anyone to come and help them. Joy Beeson talks about getting out with her son, and how he pushed her out of the way of a falling tree. Beth gets choked up talking about taking calls with people who are afraid and how hard it was to have to hang up and take more calls.
S:
-The timeline of the story is a little weird here for me, if everyone is evacuating, shouldn't they go get their kids too? And why were kids outside if FLAMING BRANCHES are literally falling from the sky?
-That bit with Madeline... man... That got me. Esp with the footage they played. Like, obviously they survived...but my God. The fear.
9:35am. Abbie and Mary speak about the exit ramp being on fire, and the first feeling of deep hopelessness. The kids started falling asleep, so they created some homemade filters. Abbie tells Mary she doesn't think they're going to get out. They prayed, and they prayed to die of smoke inhalation, and went back to work. 10:42am. Nichols talks about getting to Clark and Skyway, and how bad of an intersection it is. Total gridlock. And the firewall is coming straight at them. A video of Nichols talking to a guy in a car telling him they're stuck, and the man looks scared and asks if they're going to be ok. They then start telling everyone to abandon their cars and evacuate on foot. Joy tells of balls of flame, like from the bible, falling around them. They cut to video of a fire tornado. They move everyone to a large parking lot. Sean talks about realizing they're not going to be able to put this fire out. So they start breaking into buildings to put people in them, as the field behind it was a propane strage field, and they started to explode. Sean described it as war. Dacia tells how the fire fighters told them they're surrounded, and the only way to survive would be laying down on the concrete. She speaks about prying with her child under a blanket for hours. Finally, the front passed and they were bussed out. Norman tells of driving around, trying to get people out of their houses, as embers are flying and catching more on fire, and they were refusing. So they took them, and wouldn't let them go back when their dog ran off. He knew he wouldn't make it through the fire front, so he started looked for somewhere to go, but there was nothing. So he drove straight into and through the fire front and survived. He gets choked up talking about surviving, and that those people probably hate him, but they're alive to hate him.
S:
-Speaking of the part where they prayed they would die of smoke inhalation: have you ever had an instance where you thought you could die?
-The people being alive to hate him... How ungrateful
Shots of burnt out cars, melted cars, burned homes, and some chairs, as avoice over says its been contained 3 weeks later. A flyover shot of where homes once stood, just burned ashes and some reminants where walls once were; as news casters discuss fatalities, and missing persons. We see video of a man walking to a car, telling how he knew the person inside who died, and we see a skeleton; he says he's sorry, buddy. In a meeting, people are being briefed about going out and finding missing people and giving closure to familes. The largest ever search and rescue operation in California. Norman talks about how it was a very unprecidented fire, and fire behavior. He speaks of all the fires that have occured in California and how bad they've been, mass descrution, not being able to control them, fire fighters being trapped and killed. He said the climate has been part of the problem. Ray is cutting down a burned tree, in front of what used to be his house, with only a chimney standing. Jennifer says it's like death and a greeving process. Ray wants to see everything rebuilt, but that it's not the same. Durham, CA, in a temporary school for Paradise students, Mary is teaching. And speaks about being on the bus for 6 hours. We see some drawings the kids have done, and how sad they are. Mary says shes scared to go back. She walks through the burned out school in awe. We see a burnt out forrest, whit some home videos playing over it of happier times. Dacias kids tell her they just want to go home... but she is afraid of what the road would look like. Nichols talks about how there isn't enough housing for all the residents, and we see Joy in some sort of tent/housing. Beth says she hasn't been back to Paradise because of how many people died and are missing, but trying to figure out where to go and what to do next. She's worried people will forget with more disasters. Shes visably shaken. It cuts to black, and texts that reads: the camp fire killed 85 people, making it the dealiest wildfire in the United States in over 100 years. End title card, cut to black, and roll credits, as they display pictures of what I assume are victims of the fire.
S:
-There is a shot where Mary is walking out from the burned out school, and a mural on the wall of Where the Sidewalk Ends... Kind of apropos, considering. A lot of things ended, but there can still be life and happiness, like the poems from Shel Silverstien.
Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein
There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.
Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.
Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.
Top Five Trivia of the movie:
5: The Camp Fire was the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California's history, and the most expensive natural disaster in the world in 2018 in terms of insured losses. 85 deaths, 18,804 buildings destroyed, $16.65B in 2018.
4: Ignited by a faulty electric transmission line on Nov 8, 2018,
3: Paradise, which typically sees five inches of autumn rain by November 12, had only received one-seventh of an inch by that date in 2018.
2: Burned 153,336 acres or 240 square miles
1: The fire reached 100 percent containment after seventeen days on November 25
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