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Ariel French & Chad Morris
Chad:
My
name's Chad Morris and I lived here in Canyon Dam for 21 years. Right
when I turned 18, I moved out of my parents house to here and lived here
ever since. I worked at the RV park and played music in the garage back
here with a couple other people that live with me.
Ariel: My name is Ariel French. I moved here about 10 years ago, with my sons, Dylan and Jonathan.
Chad: We had a happy little life here for a while. It was pretty nice.
Ariel: It was happy. We loved it.
Chad:
Lots of friends came over and long term guests and visitors. Probably
hundreds of people over the 20 years I was here. It was like a retreat
for wayward travelers.
Ariel: We were forest people.
Chad: We like being out in nature and recreating and we had quads and stuff like that to go and hang out in the woods.
Ariel:
We'd take kids and old ladies on nature walks. We went up to the top of
the mountains all the time. You could look down on the lake and show
off the big trees. Just day to day living here.
Chad: Canyon
Dam’s been around since at least the 1930's if not earlier. There was
another town here before. Our little shed right here had things from the
mid 1800s that I would find when I was metal detecting. It had a
different name back then, a Native American name. But, white man got
here in I think the 30's. When they started building Lake Almanor.
Chad:
We
had the Chips Fire come through here about eight years ago. It was a
totally different scene than the Dixie Fire. We were never worried about
anything like this happening and there were tons of fire crews around
and planes flying over protecting this place.
The Dixie Fire wasn't like that.
When
we left town, there was a couple of fire trucks here that were really
insistent on us leaving. That was after they let us back in from the
first evacuation. The day the fire came, there was nobody here. No
firefighters, no personnel until after the fire had already burned the
town.
Before that, the last night we were here, we were walking
around the forest and we could see the sky glowing over towards Round
Valley Lake and Crescent Mills. It was really weird out here because all
the animals were gone, all the birds flew away, and it was just really
eerie.
We couldn't really sleep very comfortably because we were
worried about the fire coming up on us while we were sleeping. So, we
pretty much worked the last few days. We worked nonstop. We had a small
tractor and chainsaws and we just cut hundreds of trees and dozed the
ground 100 yards out behind the house trying to save this place. We had
sprinklers going from all directions. We hooked up to the RV park
because they have giant water tanks. Our water tank wasn't enough to run
all the sprinklers and it didn't have enough power. So we set them up
and ran dozens of hoses from over there. We had the house and the
property soaked. I guess it still didn't help that much. We worked from
sunup until like three o'clock in the morning, coming in soaking wet and
covered in mud and that was what I remember of it.
We had an old
man upstairs, Vinnie, a roommate and he's a stubborn and didn't want to
leave. So we were kind of staying here to try to convince him to leave
with us. We finally got him to the last day.
Ariel:
We
evacuated to Chester. Then we evacuated to Susanville. We got like the
last hotel room in town with our roommate. So, I bought a hotel room in
Reno for two nights but it was already like $350 per room per night,
because of the evacuees, I assume. Which I think is just evil. My best
friend Jackie said that she was house sitting out at Pyramid Lake and we
could come be with her. So instead of Reno, I gave my hotel rooms to a
co worker, who was staying in one of the evacuation shelters in
Susanville. He's older and wasn't very comfortable there.
So, we
went to Pyramid Lake, stayed a few nights. Then she went to housesit at
her aunt's homestead in Boredertown. So we stayed in Bordertown for two
and a half weeks with her, which was pretty comfortable. But we were at
Pyramid Lake when our house actually burned. Chad was like, “Canyon Dam
is on fire right now.” It was really weird, because we felt like we
were so far away. But when our house was burning, the ashes and the
clouds came right over top of us, and it just dumped ashes all over us.
It was pretty surreal. It was so far away. But then we had to go the
next couple weeks without any more information.
Chad:
We tried to come back and all the roads were blocked off.
Ariel:
We were on YouTube trying to find videos and see if our house was in any of the videos.
Chad:
Yeah, on a big screen TV we just scanned hundreds and hundreds of videos and photos. We found all of our neighbors' places.
Ariel:
We didn't get a picture of what it was like for weeks.
Chad:
We
were hoping some of our stuff that we parked in this little clearing
right here, like our tractor and some of our quads, we were hoping that
would have kept them safe. I was the last one in this RV park over here,
so I tried to arrange things to where they might make it and put
sprinklers on and all that and cut trees. My landlord had a Can-am,
which is an off road vehicle, and I saw pictures of it, and it was fine,
so I figured, well, maybe we still got a tractor and some quads and
stuff. But, when we finally came back in here, everything was just
completely melted and just gone. Everything. Except for this bench.
Chad:
It
was bad when we came in here, it was still smoking. There were toxic
chemicals everywhere. It's just not the same as it was, that's for sure.
Never will be I don't think. They talk about rebuilding, but it's like
rebuild for what? My trees are all gone. They might look like they're
here now but they won't be for long. This place is gonna be like a
desert. So this might be my last time ever coming here.
Ariel.
I've
only been here like four times. Less than a week ago or something, I
brought my 12 year old for the first time. He's been at his dad's house.
I went down and got my 20 year old so he could help me show him the
place and stuff. And I don't know. I don't want to sift, I don't want
anything here.
Chad:
I came through with one of our best friends and sifted through some of the stuff and there's very little point.
Ariel:
You
find something of yours, but it's all messed up. I live in a FEMA
trailer right now. So, don't really want like a bunch of crap.
Chad:
We bought a trailer right when we left. We bought a toy hauler when we got to Chico.
Ariel:
We
still couldn't drive up the road this way and all the roads were still
closed. So we went to Chico for a couple of weeks and stayed at my mom's
house.
Chad:
We bought an RV there because we had to have a private place to be alone here and there.
Ariel:
We
stayed there in the RV for maybe a week. I worked for the Forest
Service in Chester and my boss called me and asked if we would be
interested in staying at Almanor South Campground in our RV for a while
in the host spot. We stayed there for like a month and a half. Maybe
almost two months that we got to live at Almanor South. The campground
was closed, so we had the whole place to ourselves. It was kind of nice.
Chad:
It was really nice because it was the only spot around there that didn't burn. So we were still surrounded by green trees.
Ariel:
I
got to go to work, which has helped me a lot. I went on two Dixie fire
assignments. One in Quincy, I did the radio operator for 21 days. Then I
did my second one in Susanville. Work has really helped me a lot, to
get through and working the Dixie fire has made me emotionally healthy.
16 hour days help you not think very much about stuff. Too busy, you
know, it's not important.
Chad:
We are in Westwood now, at the Lassen West Village.
Ariel:
It's not a bad place.
Chad:
It's
just not what we're used to. We used to have plenty of property to run
around and now as soon as you walk out with a trailer, you're surrounded
by other people that lost their homes and trailers, which is kind of
depressing. But, FEMA is really nice for helping us out with that and
giving us a place to stay and helping us pay the bills.
Ariel:
When
I was doing the radio, I heard some firefighters talking that were in
Canyon Dam. They said that they were finding heat, like four feet deep.
And it had been like two months.
Chad:
Every time I have come
out here, I've had to put a fire out somewhere. I came through here to
cut firewood and almost every time there was orange flame that I had to
put out with bottles of water. I've seen a few deer around, way out
there, but there are not any animals around here anymore.
The place is just basically dead.
Ariel:
Yeah,
we used to have, Pileated Woodpeckers in our yard and Goshawks and
Western tanagers and really cool stuff that you don't get to see.
Chad:
We had squirrels, chipmunks, deer and bear.
Ariel:
Our
neighbor used to feed the foxes. So you could go over to his house and
see them. I always nagged him about feeding the foxes but he was like
70. So you can't stop him.
Chad:
He lived there for 65 years.
The house he lived in right over here, he lived there his whole life
and he's like, 70 or something like that.
Ariel:
He was one of my best friends, still is. He lives in Westwood right next to us.
Ariel:
It’s frustrating having no direction.
Chad:
Having
no direction and the kids not being with us. Me and her spending so
much time apart after something traumatic was kind of rough. Those are
anxieties. Not knowing where the hell we're going and how we're going to
do it and how we're going to finance it all.
Ariel:
This was our forever place.
Chad:
I planned to inherit this. That was my plan hopefully.
Ariel:
Or at least just keep living here.
Chad:
Or just keep paying rent and living here until I died. Plans changed.
We have resources and kind of have a direction for the near future.
Ariel:
We hope to get somewhere to live that we like.
Chad:
I
hope we win our lawsuit against PG&E, which ensures that we will
and they pay, at least some of what they owe us. So that we can find a
new place somewhere else that's similar to this and be happy again, and
be able to have our friends over and our family.
Both of our moms
almost died right before this happened. Having this place to have my mom
and the kids was a godsend. I have had dozens of friends call and
apologize, saying that they loved this place almost as much as I did.
Whenever they had hard times, they'd come through here and we'd take
care of them and counsel them and help get them back on their feet.
Ariel:
When
we were still in Bordertown. My niece would come every other weekend
and when I went to pick her up, as soon as I saw her she started crying.
She didn't know if her house in Taylorsville was still there or not
yet. She started crying and she was like I am going to miss your house
more than mine.
Chad:
Sometimes we would have 12 or 13 kids in this house.
Ariel:
There were always a lot of kids. It was a place where they could be.
Chad:
Everybody was always safe and comfortable.
Ariel:
Now,
all these kids are like: “When am I coming over? When am I coming
over?” I have to tell them I don't have anywhere for you to be.
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