User reviews

Rarely is the bad thing about a documentary that its too short, but in this case it felt like the story was cut off quite abruptly. A well made doc though, compelling story and relevant interviews.

Watch this - for the humanity a fire like this touches. It's a well made documentary that sensitively covers the beginning, middle and end of this terrible fire.

Every US citizen should watch this, so they know what to prepare for, as climate change continues.

In Australia, it's our annual reality since 2019/20 summer.

This could be their annual reality too, soon..

The recent fire in California and subsequent blackout is another scary reminder that we cannot grow jaded about the increasingly destructive consequences of climate change.

This short was effective, timely, and just an overall terrifying presentation of what those poor people went through during the Camp Fire. Mad respect to all the fire fighters, first responders, and even the researchers and scientists out there trying to sort this mess out.

At least this is not as bad as the widely debunked frontline which cast around for blame ignoring the science.

The science clearly shows that long term severe drought and major wildfires have been endemic in California history for hundreds of thousands of years. since the last glacial maximum the numbers of fires in California for thousands of years, and before that, before the last glacial period massive drought and endemic wildfires occurred regularly for hundreds of thousands of years.

The only thing making that worse today is the massive over-development of California. Specifically massive development into fire prone areas where soil sample strata show there were regular wildfires all along.

Oh "record setting" damage to property and loss of life? ONLY because of the record setting population and record setting amount of real estate where there once was none.

These first person accounts were most interesting but the documentary has a subtext that climate change is the reason for so many destructive forest fires in California. Only part of one sentence mentions the real reason for these disasters and that one sentence tries to diminish it. Forest fires are natural and lighting starts them as they are a part of the natural ecosystem. However, in California so called environmentalists have put through laws which allow the build up of dense waste material on the forest floor for years, which in the past nature addressed with natural burning. Due to these forced buildups, when the ignition spark finally comes such fires are supercharged and almost impossible to control. The climate in California is the same climate that weather researchers have recorded for many decades. And, as in the past, there are dry spells and high winds that are natural for the region. A change to a more sensible pragmatic forest management concerning waste buildup on the forest floor, like was in place decades ago, would make forest fires in California manageable again.

This was an amazingly done documentary on how quickly devastation can happen. I applaud all survivors and am amazed at all the volunteer efforts. The emergency crews were amazing and I hope to see a second part on the rebuilding of Paradise

I was tearing up the whole time. It's a heartbreaking point of view from a few victims caught in the horrific "camp fire" fire. There's videos from phones and dash cans and I was on the edge of my seat and tearing up. I definitely recommend watching this.

This documentary maintains a tight focus on the terrifying and overwhelming experience of the fire from the perspective of those caught up in it, with a special emphasis on the emotions of Paradise residents. Which is fine if that's all you are looking for in a documentary.

Where it falls horribly flat is that it never conveys what caused the fire or the reasons for why fires have become so prevalent in recent years in California. The October 29 Frontline documentary with the same name "Fire in Paradise" is far superior. The Frontline documentary conveys very well both the horrific experience of the fire as well as discussing other factors like the fire's cause, climate change, and flaws in the emergency response devices and systems.

I watched this short film about the devastating "Camp Fire" in Paradise, CA on Netflix. Some of the footage in this is just amazing. In this day and age with everyone recording things on their cell phones, it amounts to some scary footage of people literally driving through flames as they try to escape to safety. It's terrifying, and it shows exactly how fast a wildfire can get out of control and why we need to enact climate and environmental policies to try to stop this horrible trend in which wildfires are getting worse and worse each year. My heart breaks for the people of Paradise and other people who have had their lives turned upside down by wildfires. This documentary does a good job of painting a picture of that day - how everything went from normal to horrific but in mere minutes.

Fire in Paradise is a devastating recount of a wildfire that bulldozed through the small town of Paradise, California in 2018. In this documentary, individuals who lived through the event share their firsthand experiences of being a teacher in a school bus full of children getting stuck in a sea of traffic on the road to evacuation, a mother camping out in a building surrounded by exploding propane tanks with her kids, or serving as a volunteer firefighter working to save those who were left behind. Footage reveals the horrifying conditions that the people of Paradise had to go through during their escape from the fire and the completely flattened neighborhoods and buildings that many residents will never be able to return to.

This 2018 wildfire, officially known as The Camp Fire, spread in an unusually rapid way, compared to other wildfires, covering 153,335 acres, and killing a total of 85 people in the two weeks that it burned for. The fire ignited due to an old, poorly-maintained electrical transmission. This region of California had been facing a wind storm and a drought at the time that the fire started, and a firefighter interviewed in Fire in Paradise states that the California humidity levels had greatly decreased in recent years. At its' peak, the fire was able to spread at a rate of about 80 football fields a minute, quickly trapping residents of the area and creating mass panic as traffic jams arose on evacuation routes. The neglection of transmission tower conditions is a surprisingly prevalent issue and highly irresponsible, unsustainable, and, as seen in this documentary, dangerous issue with electric companies. Issues like this can create an increased potential for wildfires, risk that has already grown as global climate change causes the temperature to rise and the humidity to drop in many areas. By creating more cautious maintenance standards for gas and electrical companies, we can take away some factors in this problem, but the most change would come from recognizing and taking direct action towards the issue of global warming.

Fire in Paradise was a harrowing portrayal of an event that many people have seen through news broadcasts or articles, but seeing and hearing stories directly from people who experienced it firsthand gave me a visceral reaction. This short documentary had me captivated and in awe throughout each survivor's story as well as the footage from during and after the fire's destruction. From an outside perspective it is impossible to comprehend the fear and devastation that these families and individuals lived through, but I think that this documentary may be as close as one could get. I would recommend this film to everyone and believe that this documentary is very important to watch, as fear is often a necessary force to inspire people to make change.

Towards the end of the documentary I saw a skeleton in a car, but it may not have been real. To my knowledge, all cadavers were removed as soon as they were found. Nobody was allowed back into Paradise until everything had been inspected, which took a couple of months. If they were joking about the skeleton being there, it was in very poor taste.

Not going to comment from either side of the political spectrum on this one. That has been done ad nauseum by now. Any complex event, whether a joyous one or a tragedy, is not a case of Black or White. Right or Wrong. It is always shades of Gray. So, anyone who thinks that the blame for this rests solely on "X" rather than "Y", or "Y" rather than "Z" is purely delusional. And has an agenda.

What I will say, and I have to be critical about this is:

1. This documentary comes off as very amateurish in my eye. Like it was someone's big break, or even done by a bunch of college kids. The cuts and edits are jarring. The endless litany of personal accounts jumping back and forth with no sense of time or impact (except for a tiny little artificial clock) makes it clear they took accounts and artificially generated a timeline from them. And the lack of map graphics with locations showing where the individual accounts are coming from lends me to believe Netflix was just using up end-of-year funds to get this one in the can.

2. Probably more of a personal observation, but, did anyone else feel like a lot of these "interviews" were scripted. These weren't actors, so they should sound like average people. But they came across too smooth in their delivery, and the dialogue was too "generic" and crisp, to be considered natural. It is almost like Netflix interviewed these people, and then told them, "that's fine....but we'd rather have you say it like this instead".

All in all, an average documentary about a horrific incident, that honestly fails to elicit much emotion due to canned dialogue and sophomoric execution.

I watched both ABC specials on Newsom addressing he & PG&E in the aftermath of this devastation. And what he did to get the PG&E principles off easy, is so far beyond criminal I can't describe it. And those specials were from a network that is typically friendly to Newsom.

With so much devastation up North, it sure didn't take long for this monster to set his sites further south. I'm from the San Fernando Valley originally. A fabulous place to grow up in during the 50s 60s and 70s.

Moreover, from Malibu north to the Ventura County line, we're my stopping grounds typically.

What fun and natural beauty did I enjoy? So much.

Let's just call it what it is: Shuck & Jive Gavin refuses to keep fire hydrants 'hydrated'; refuses to follow the will of the people who voted in for the building of several Reservoirs like 12 years ago (yet none of been built); refuses to clean up the existing forests to reduce fire hazards, is owned by lobbies, and in general, does not give a darn about people whatsoever. A self-absorbed incompetent that continues to trip and fall with every issue. Good thing he has connections close by...

Nobody's even talking about the phony bologna climate change anymore. Make no mistake about it, This is all man-made. More accurately, Newsom and a loony State Legislature made.

We are so glad we made our escape from California when we did. I loved it there for decades, the better part of my life.

My heart goes out to all of those affected in northern and central California, as well as the devastation down south just months ago. It was Armageddon, courtesy of Gavin Newson. Don't kid yourselves.

I gave this 4 stars because although it's well done in terms of what people went through; it failed to fulfill its responsibility by exposing the root cause. That's how one saves lives & property in the future. The producers chose not to do that. Probably from fear. Unacceptable.