California family looking for place to live in wake of Camp Fire

The MacDonald family was getting ready to move to Montana. They had their place up for sale in Magalia, California and they’d been looking at houses in Columbia Falls.

But on the morning of Nov. 8 the Camp Fire roared into Paradise and Magalia. Tabitha MacDonald was in the Flathead, visiting her son and looking at houses. Back home, her husband, Tom, was able to pack up the car with two kids, two dogs and his daughter Steffeni as a black plume rose over the house.

Tom has seen plenty of wildfires before.

But this one was different.

“This looked evil,” he said.

The Camp Fire bore down on Paradise and Magalia. Tom’s brother’s home was reduced to rubble. The assisted living center his mother lived in burned to the ground. She was evacuated in time, but the town is no more.

All told, the Camp Fire was the worst fire in California history. To date, it has burned down 9,700 single family homes and thousands of other structures. Photos of Paradise and Magalia are an apocalyptic scene, with burned out vehicles strewn along the sides of the roads, powerlines down and complete neighborhoods reduced to ash. Seventy one are confirmed dead and hundreds remain missing.

The MacDonalds aren’t sure if their homes are still standing. They lived on a bigger spread with family members living in separate homes and so far, they haven’t been allowed back in to see. Even if the homes are intact, there’s no utilities, no services and the property won’t be worth close to what it used to be. There’s also concern about looters.

“The unknown is the hard part,” Tabitha said.

Steffeni is staying in California for now, where she has a good job at an assisted living center. The rest of the family is staying in a two bedroom apartment just south of Columbia Falls with their son, Cody and his wife Tessa, who have lived here for awhile. There’s 10 people and two dogs in the apartment. A bed sits where the dining room used to be. There’s one bathroom.

The MacDonalds are hoping to find a place to rent until they can get back on their feet and assess the situation back in California. That might not be until January.

Anyone who can help can contact Tabitha via email at tabithamacdonald1@gmail.com or by phone at (530) 514-1067.