Before the Call — Camp Fire, Paradise
At 6:25 a.m. on November 8, 2018, a caller reported a fire near a PG&E power line in Feather River Canyon in Butte County, California. A Cal Fire captain arriving at the scene radioed a prophetic warning to dispatch: "This has the potential of a major incident." He was right. Driven by 50-mile-per-hour Jarbo Gap winds, the Camp Fire tore through the mountain hamlet of Concow and reached the eastern edge of Paradise — a town of 26,000 — within 80 minutes of ignition.
Three dispatchers at the Paradise Police Department's 911 center were on duty. For the first hour and fifteen minutes of that window, they had received no notification from Cal Fire that the fire was a threat to Paradise. Calls reporting smoke and ash were answered with accurate information — as of that moment: the fire was north of Concow, near Highway 70. No danger to Paradise.
At 7:39 a.m., a caller asked dispatcher Carol Ladrini whether she should evacuate. "No, you'll be notified," Ladrini said. "There's a fire north of Concow. No danger to Paradise." By 7:45 a.m. — just six minutes later — the fire had jumped the canyon and Cal Fire issued an evacuation order for Paradise's east side. Ladrini continued advising other callers they were safe, because she had not yet been told otherwise. Then, at approximately 8:18 a.m., Cal Fire called her directly: mandatory evacuation for the entire town. Her response, recorded on the line: "Are you serious?"
Ladrini was working with the information she had. The problem was the pathway between Cal Fire incident command — managing a catastrophic, fast-moving wildfire with firefighters already in rescue mode — and the dispatch center that 26,000 residents were calling. That pathway failed. Seventeen cell towers burned on day one. Cal Fire's radio system and Paradise PD's system were not compatible — when cell service died, their ability to coordinate died with it. Paradise Police dispatch was not notified of the first evacuation order until 15 minutes after it was issued.
Meanwhile, a single Butte County Sheriff's Office employee was manually coordinating evacuation zone alerts using newly-contracted CodeRED software. Four zones in Paradise received no evacuation order at all. Alert call failure rates ranged from 25 to 94 percent across different neighborhoods as towers were lost. Officials tried to access the federal IPAWS system to push alerts to all phones — and failed. The Camp Fire killed 85 people. Most were 60 years or older. Dozens died in their cars.
Ladrini was not at fault. She had accurate information for her moment — and no pathway to get updated faster. The failure was structural: there was no reliable, real-time information feed from Cal Fire's incident command to the Paradise 911 center during a rapidly evolving wildfire.
What the protocol should look like — before an incident, not during:
- Define who is responsible for notifying dispatch when fire status changes. In Paradise, that chain wasn't clear. Cal Fire's IC was managing a catastrophic fire with firefighters in rescue mode. Notifying the local police dispatch center was not at the top of the list — and there was no automatic mechanism to ensure it happened.
- Establish a liaison position at dispatch during a wildfire MCI. Some ICS structures include a communications coordinator embedded in the PSAP or a direct radio channel between IC and dispatch. That person's only job is keeping dispatch current on fire perimeter, evacuation status, and road closures.
- Pre-define the trigger for a "fire is now in our zone" notification. Cal Fire issues zone orders from their side; when does that automatically generate a direct call or radio alert to the affected local dispatch center? Not 15 minutes later — immediately, or the order is meaningless for callers who are already on the line asking if they should leave.
- Script the "we don't know" answer carefully. Ladrini gave callers false security not out of negligence but because the alternative — "I don't have information" — sounds like nothing. Consider: "The fire is currently in the Concow area. I don't have an evacuation order for your zone yet, but conditions are changing fast. Stay near a door and be ready to move." That's honest without being dismissive.
Paradise Police Lieutenant Anthony Borgman could not reach Cal Fire's incident command post by cell phone, and their radio systems weren't compatible. Cal Fire's IC was 45 minutes away by dirt road. When the towers burned, Borgman had no way to get real-time fire intelligence — the same intelligence he needed to direct evacuations and dispatch resources.
This is not unique to Paradise. Across the U.S., CHP, fire, and local law enforcement routinely operate on incompatible radio frequencies. The California Highway Patrol does not share a common platform with Cal Fire or local law enforcement agencies.
- Know your interoperability gaps before the incident. Which agencies respond in your jurisdiction that your center cannot talk to directly? Fire mutual aid? State law enforcement? National Guard? Write that list down. It exists whether or not you know it.
- Know the workaround for each gap. Patching, cross-band repeaters, dedicated interoperability channels (like those in FirstNet), or a liaison officer physically present at dispatch. The workaround needs to exist before you need it.
- In an active incident where your comms with a partner agency go down: First, notify your supervisor. Second, establish an alternate pathway — a runner if necessary, or a designated cell number that isn't on the same tower as the primary. Third, document the communication gap in real time. You will need that record.
- If you can't reach the IC, assume the worst-case scenario operationally. If you lose contact with Cal Fire and the last known status was "fire approaching from the east," you do not wait for a call that may not come. You escalate internally and flag the gap to whoever is running evacuation coordination.
The failures here were stacked: a single point of failure (one person), a newly contracted system they weren't fully trained on, a zone-by-zone alert strategy that required manual selection under fire, and no redundant confirmation that alerts were actually reaching residents.
- Single points of failure in alert systems are unacceptable. If your jurisdiction's mass notification capability depends on one person knowing how to use one piece of software, you are one person being unavailable away from silence. Who is the backup? Has the backup trained on the system?
- Zone-by-zone alerts require a pre-approved zone map and a decision authority, not improvisation. In Paradise, officials tried to use zone alerts to manage evacuation traffic. That's a legitimate strategy — but only if the zone boundaries are pre-defined, the IC can authorize zones quickly, and the alert operator can execute without decision fatigue. None of that was in place.
- Alert operators need to know when an alert fails, in real time. CodeRED's failure rate data only became visible after the incident. In the moment, the operator had no feedback that 56% of calls in the eastern zones were failing. There was no dashboard showing: "Of 4,272 alert attempts, 2,393 failed." If you don't know alerts aren't reaching people, you think the notification is done.
- IPAWS as a backup — and why it matters. Officials tried to access IPAWS during the Camp Fire and failed. Whether that was a training issue, a technical issue, or an authorization issue was never fully resolved publicly. But the model is correct: zone-by-zone opt-in alerts should always have a "blanket all phones" option as a backup when the opt-in system is failing.
This is one of the hardest calls in dispatching: you have a caller reporting conditions that don't match the status you've been given, and you don't know who's right. In Paradise, the dispatcher at 7:50 a.m. told that caller there were no evacuations — because there weren't. Yet. For their zone. But spot fires all over their neighborhood tells a different story than "the fire is north of Concow."
What you can do with honest information and the right framing:
- Take the caller's report seriously as intelligence. "Spot fires all over" is a field observation from someone standing in it. Write it down immediately. It should go to your supervisor within 60 seconds — it's a data point that suggests fire has traveled faster than your last status update indicated.
- Don't issue an unauthorized evacuation order. You don't have the authority to order an evacuation, and doing so can cause harm — it can cause accidents on already-strained roads, and it can create liability. What you can say is real: "There is a wildfire in the area and conditions are changing rapidly. I have no evacuation order for your location at this moment. If fire is immediately near you, do not wait for an order — get out now and move away from the smoke."
- Tell them to be ready to move. "Conditions are changing fast. Please be prepared to leave immediately if you see fire approaching. I'll stay on the line with you." That is honest, actionable, and doesn't contradict a nonexistent order.
- Flag the discrepancy up the chain immediately. You have a caller reporting spot fires in an area you've been told is not in the fire zone. That discrepancy needs to reach your supervisor and, through them, Cal Fire IC — now. Not after the call. Now.
The Camp Fire turned the cell infrastructure into a casualty of the incident — and with it, the ability of residents to call for help, the ability of responders to coordinate, and the ability of dispatch to receive incoming calls. The 911 call reroute chain (Paradise → Chico → Butte County) worked partially, but residents dependent on cell phones in the fire zone lost access as towers burned.
For your center:
- Know your geographic vulnerabilities. What single-tower zones exist in your service area? If the one cell site serving a neighborhood burns or loses power, what happens to 911 calls from that neighborhood? Do you know the answer? Your carrier rep should.
- Know your failover plan. Does your center have a pre-planned rollover destination if you become overwhelmed or lose infrastructure? Who makes that call, and how is it communicated to callers? The Paradise → Chico → Butte County chain worked because it was pre-planned. That plan existed. Does yours?
- Know where backup communications live. Satellite phones. Amateur radio networks in your county. FirstNet mobile infrastructure. FEMA deployable communications assets. In a disaster where towers are burning, these are your backups. Do you know who activates them and how fast they can be deployed?
- The callers who can't reach you are often the ones who need you most. As towers burned, residents in the highest-risk zones lost cell service. The people who most needed to call 911 became the people least able to. Understanding that pattern in your own geography helps you anticipate where your door-to-door resources need to go when the phones go quiet.
The Camp Fire illuminated a structural gap in public safety preparation: dispatchers in wildland-urban interface (WUI) communities often have deep knowledge of structure fires and EMS — and limited exposure to wildfire-specific dispatch doctrine.
What WUI dispatchers need to know:
- Fire behavior basics. Slope + wind + fuel = rate of spread. A fire moving uphill in 50 mph winds is not the same as a structure fire. Understanding that fire moves in a direction and can jump is essential to triaging incoming calls geographically. Callers on the east side in a west wind incident have more time than callers on the west side. This changes your resource allocation.
- How Cal Fire or your state fire agency issues orders. What is the ICS chain from IC to evacuation order? Who has authority to issue a zone evacuation in your jurisdiction — and how does that order reach you? This should be documented, not assumed.
- Evacuation zone maps. Your center should have zone maps loaded in CAD and on a wall. When IC issues an evacuation for Zone 4, you need to know what streets are in Zone 4 without looking it up. Every second counts when callers are asking if they need to leave.
- Awareness of the fire's location at all times. During a wildfire MCI, dispatch needs a dedicated person or screen for tracking current fire perimeter. This is not a "check the scanner when you get a chance" situation.
- Pre-planned instructions for fire-specific caller scenarios: smoke in the house, car surrounded by fire, downed power line blocking exit route, caller with mobility limitations, caller who waited too long. These should be scripted before fire season.
Ladrini told callers they were safe. Then the fire came. She was working with the only information she had — but she carried the weight of those conversations afterward. That is moral injury: the experience of acting in good faith and still feeling responsible for harm. It is different from guilt, and it is real.
What you owe yourself:
- Don't perform "fine." Dispatchers in high-casualty events often return to duty quickly and suppress the processing of what happened. The "I'm fine" reflex is strong in public safety culture. Naming what happened — to yourself, a peer, a counselor — is not weakness. It's how you stay in the job.
- Know that moral injury is a specific phenomenon. You may not have PTSD symptoms. You may have persistent guilt, a changed relationship with your work, or intrusive thoughts about specific calls. These are recognizable patterns with recognizable treatment. A therapist who works with first responders and understands moral injury can help in ways a generic EAP counselor may not.
- Separate your actions from your system's failures. Ladrini did her job. The system that was supposed to get her updated fire information in real time failed. Those are two different things. The process of separating them is real cognitive work — and it takes time.
What your center owes you:
- A CISD or structured debrief within 72 hours of a mass casualty shift
- Access to a peer support program staffed by people who have worked 911
- A supervisor who checks in, not just to clear the call but to ask how you're doing two weeks later
- A culture that makes it safe to say "I'm struggling" without fear it will affect your schedule, your standing, or your career
✍️ Your Reflection
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