'I was sitting in my car just screaming, waiting to die': A survivor of California's Camp Fire describes her harrowing escape

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November 20, 2018 9:55 AM

A Paradise resident describes how she narrowly escaped the Camp Fire by abandoning her car on the side of the road and running for her life.

tearing through parts of Northern California
leaving thousands homeless
survivors' accounts of their harrowing escapes

PARADISE, California — Like many other residents of Paradise, Jackie Rabbit didn't receive an evacuation notice on her phone the morning of November 8.

Instead, as the fast-moving Camp Fire roared toward the 27,000-person town in Northern California, she got a call from her 12-year-old daughter. Her school was being evacuated, she said, so Rabbit had to come pick her up.

Rabbit's husband went to retrieve their daughter, and Rabbit left 15 minutes after him with their dog, Finnegan. But everyone in the town was leaving, so traffic was gridlocked. Rabbit's husband made it to the main road, but she was stuck.

But the flames started swirling closer and closer to where she was, and the traffic still didn't move.

She pulled her car off to the side of the road and as she got out, two firefighters came running up beside her carrying an injured firefighter. They asked if she was okay.

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