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Map shows homes destroyed—and spared—by the Camp Fire

Majority of houses obliterated by California’s deadliest and most devastating fire

The city of Paradise, California.
The city of Paradise, California.
Photo courtesy of Cal Fire

Earlier this week, Cal Fire launched an interactive online map showing the status of homes within the perimeter of the deadly Camp Fire still ravaging Butte County.

Icons on the map reveal the locations of homes that have been inspected in the area by officials, color coded with the degree of damage evident from the curb.

  • Black icons indicate houses that appear to be unharmed.
  • Green icons indicate homes with less than 10 percent of their visible elements damaged.
  • Red icons indicate homes classified as “destroyed,” which means 50 percent or more of the structure has visible and unambiguous fire damage.

The online tool is centered on certain neighborhoods in the town of Paradise, which was almost entirely destroyed by the fire. Cal Fire notes in recent incident reports related to the fire that as building inspections expand the boundaries of the map will also expand.

From above, Paradise looks like a red stain on the map. Zooming in closer reveals that the overwhelming majority of inspected homes are classified as “destroyed.” Clicking on the images further reveals that most of those have been reduced to almost nothing.

Here’s the map.

Click here to see the full map.

Clicking on an icon or entering a street address will bring up a photo from the scene.

Cal Fire warns map perusers:

Field damage inspection is still ongoing and subject to change. The points shown in this map are being updated regularly. Data is subject to change as information is gathered and verified. The icons on the map indicate the current known status of the structure.

If your structure is not identified by an icon, it has not yet been identified.

Many Paradise residents commiserated online Tuesday by sharing images of their destroyed residences, sometimes with a few surviving (or at least recognizable) personal affects still visible in the ashes.

For Butte County residents, the map means they can check on the state of homes they haven’t seen since evacuating last Thursday.

For everyone else, it’s an early look at the damage wrong by the worst fire in California’s history.

It’s difficult to gauge how the town as a whole has fared, since the inspections emphasize those areas worst hit by the fires.

But the news coming out of this onetime community of nearly 27,000 is almost uniformly grim, with locals telling Curbed SF and other outlets that the community is “essentially gone.”