Wildfire 'Cremated' His Town, but a Centenarian Lived to Tell the Tale

CHICO, California — Harold Maurer was 100 years old when the Camp Fire destroyed Paradise, California, a year ago.

Perhaps the oldest person to escape the inferno, he says his survival was “pure luck.”

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That’s not exactly all it was. Maurer, a widower who lived alone, fled his home that morning with his harmonica and his late wife’s jewelry. Driving off in his 1998 Lincoln Town Car, he realized he didn’t have enough gas to make it off the mountain so took shelter in a parking lot at his church. His son Jack, 72, desperately looking for him, found his dad asleep in his car.

Today the gray-thatched widower, 101, resides in Chico. Six of his relatives — the Maurers span four generations — were also in the neighboring town of Paradise when disaster knocked on their front doors and destroyed their homes.

Town was “cremated”

“My whole family made it out,” Maurer says now. “But the town was cremated. That’s the word I use.”

He speaks from his son’s comfortable home on a man-made lake in Chico, where all the Maurers now live.

Harold Maurer still owns his vacant land in Paradise but he’s staying put. “How am I going to rebuild?” he asks. “At my age, that would be foolish.”

“It’s a catastrophe that happened. It’s changed the lives of many, many people. Myself as an old ducker, I’m lucky. My mind is still clear, but the body’s getting a little bit chipped away at. And my health isn’t bad, but I could pass away tomorrow. But I’m ready for when the good Lord wants me.”

Maurer’s family and Christian faith are the pillars of his life. He plays the harmonica for fun, sounding out “On Top of Old Smokey” with gusto. And he remains a celebrity in the town where he’d lived for about 30 years.

Last summer, when the Save Mart grocery in Paradise staged a ceremonial reopening, Maurer cut the red ribbon as the mayor and firefighters looked on and applauded.