The investigators reached out to the Butte County District Attorney's (DA) Office on Novemand discussed their initial findings with the office - including their concern that a PG&E helicopter had been seen hovering above the suspect tower. The investigators had found the broken iron hook, also known as a "C hook", and it appeared to have not just broken, but had worn through after a great deal of time hanging in the windy environs of the Feather River Canyon. Within a few hours, the Cal Fire investigators had begun to reach their preliminary conclusions that the Camp Fire was started by the failure of a suspension hook holding up an insulator string which in turn held up the highly energized line. A painstakingly detailed arson investigation began. Something had broken - and sent the live 115 kilovolt (kV) power line (also known as a conductor) to arc against the steel tower and shower molten steel and aluminum metal onto the grass and brush below. Looking up, the investigators saw a detached line hanging down into the steel superstructure of the high-voltage transmission tower. The ground under what was PG&E's transmission tower Number 27/222 showed clear signs of the fire's beginning and a burnt path toward the southwest. Traveling up Camp Creek Road (from which the Camp Fire took its quirky name), the investigators came to what appeared to be the fire's beginning. Within a few hours of the fire, Cal Fire arson investigators began to make their way to where the responding Captain had seen the start of the fire. A town of some 26,000 people was utterly destroyed.Ĩ4 souls were lost in the most horrific way imaginable - burned to death. Thousands of homes and businesses were lost in the matter of a couple of hours. Paradise and its residents were hit from three side by massive walls of fire. In less than an hour, the fire had torn through Pulga and the mountain hamlet of Concow and reached the eastern outskirts of Paradise - throwing softball-sized embers ahead to the north into Magalia and over the town into the Butte Creek Canyon on the west side. The Captain radioed into his headquarters with urgency in his voice - his crew would never be able to get in front of this fire to control it and in a prophetic understatement he told dispatchers: "This has the potential of a major incident." The sight sent a chill through the Captain and crew because they could see the fire was already exploding toward the south and west riding the Jarbo Winds, which were so high the Captain struggled to remain upright. Arriving above PG&E's Poe Dam just before sunrise, the Captain and crew saw the beginnings of a conflagration under the PG&E high voltage power line on the ridge top across the river from them. The Cal Fire crew immediately rolled out of the station up Highway 70 and the Canyon, past the small enclave of Pulga and up river to the Poe Dam. He went back inside to continue fixing breakfast, but was interrupted as the station's dispatch radio feed went off alerting him to a possible fire in the Canyon. He discovered it wasn't rain he was hearing, but pine needles from the surrounding forest forcibly pelting the outside of the station. He started to look outside when the wind took the door from his hand. As he fixed that breakfast he started to hear what he thought was rain begin to hit the roof and sides of the fire station. Prefaceĭuring the early morning hours of Thursday, November 8, 2018, the CA Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) Captain in charge of the Jarbo Gap station in the Feather River Canyon could hear the "Jarbo Winds" as they were known locally begin to howl as he got up to fix breakfast for his crew. In memory of the 84 deceased victims of Pacific Gas and Electric's (PG&E) criminal Camp Fire.
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