Rebuilding Paradise: Ron Howard revisits a California town incinerated by wildfires

By Liam Lacey

Rating: B 

As the director of the 1991 blazing melodrama, Backdraft, Ron Howard has some experience with spectacular conflagrations. 

But apart from the throbbing Hans Zimmer score (co-composed by Lorne Balfe), there’s slight connection between that fictional kitsch and the somber reality of Rebuilding Paradise, his empathetic documentary about a town destroyed by the 2018 California forest fires.  

An entire town goes up in flames in Ron Howard’s documentary Rebuilding Paradise.

Paradise, California, about 85 miles north of the state capitol, Sacramento, was a town of 26,000, spread out on a triangular-shaped ridge between two canyons. On November 8, 2018, it was essentially obliterated by the “Camp Fire” (named after Camp Creek Road where it originated from a faulty electrical line), the most destructive wildfire in California’s history. 

The irony of the town’s name was not lost on news reporters who swarmed to report on the town’s demise (although Donald Trump, who visited 11 days after the disaster, twice referred to it as “Pleasure.”) The fire, which swept over most of the town and surrounding communities in a single day, killed 85 people and destroyed almost 14,000 homes at a cost of more than $16.5 billion.

The most dramatic fire footage is in the first few minutes of Howard’s film - mostly on-the-ground and dash-board camera amateur footage, accompanied by a collage of radio signals, sirens, and frightened prayers. Thereafter, the film captures the post-disaster reality, focusing on a handful of town characters who carried on.

PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN

The film treats them with dignity, while recognizing their various degrees of post-traumatic shock. One is police officer, Matt Gates, who lost his own home, and eventually, after months of working 15-hour days, his marriage. Like several of the families, he moved into a temporary mobile home, while the family decides to either build or move. 

The first two new building permits were issued five months after the fire. School superintendent Michelle John comforts high-school students in a make-shift classroom in a mall, and is desperate to get the sports field ready, so the 2019 graduates can have their commencement ceremony.  Her husband, a war veteran, has his combat nightmares triggered by the fire.  

The town’s mayor, Steve “Wooley” Culleton, who moved to town years before as “the town drunk” and had his own regeneration, bursts into tears at the ground-breaking of his new home. Something you rarely see in dramatic movies is grown men breaking down crying. 

The Hollywood movie world intersects the documentary reality here in a visit from Erin Brockovich. You may remember from the 2000 drama, that Brockovich (played by Julia Roberts) won a $333-million case against Pacific Gas and Energy, for dumping contaminants in Hinkley, California. That same utility company repeatedly failed to maintain the electric transmission line that sparked the Camp Fire, and pled guilty to 84 counts of manslaughter. (Though it’s not part of the film, PG&E agreed to a settlement of $13.5-billion, not just for Camp Fire, but for causing various fires in 2017 and 2018 with faulty equipment.) 

Howard’s film, which premiered at last January’s Sundance Film Festival, is more a first act than a complete story. It takes us up to the high school commencement ceremony, the start of the new football season, and high-school kids raising money to disaster relief in other parts of the world, while a row of crosses memorializes the dead. 

A final montage warns of how environmental catastrophes are becoming the new planetary norm.

There’s an awkward sense though that Howard’s laudable desire to celebrate love of community and resilience gives us a partial picture of reality, or, at best, a first act. There’s little sense of day-to-day life in the gutted town.  News reports indicate that a year after the event, in Nov. 2019, 90 percent of the town’s population was still dispersed. The poor and those who rented rather than owned have no homes to return to.  

Recovery has also been impeded by the pandemic:  According to the town’s website, as of this month about 400 homes and 70 multi-unit buildings have been rebuilt, with another 1100 applications accepted for new builds. This council has agreed to allow land-owners to continue living in recreational vehicles for another six months, which sounds less like Paradise Regained than Limbo Extended.

Rebuilding Paradise. Directed by Ron Howard.  The film is streaming on Hot Docs at Home and will continue to October 25. Screenings will be followed by a Q&A with director Howard.