She didn’t know if she was going to make it.
Vicki Gronseth sat in a line of cars trying to escape the Camp Fire as parts of Paradise, California, became engulfed in flames.
Nestled along the Sierra Nevada foothills, the town once known as a place of refuge was quickly being devoured by a massive blaze that began on Nov. 8. With more than 50 deaths, 10,000 structures destroyed, and 100 people still unaccounted for, the inferno is now the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California’s history.
Eating dinner with her 89-year-old mother and her daughter’s boyfriend, Gronseth recalled the day she evacuated. The family found a safe haven at Calvary Chapel Chico, just a 30-minute drive from Paradise. While there, Gronseth talked and prayed with Billy Graham Rapid Response Team (RRT) chaplains, who are in the area to provide emotional and spiritual care.
“The flames were right on both sides of us,” she said, motioning her hands up and down as if forming two walls.
“We didn’t move, didn’t move, didn’t move …” Gronseth repeated.
With only a few escape routes in Paradise and a town of 26,000 attempting to evacuate—Gronseth found herself stuck in traffic. Overhead, the sky deceitfully looked like midnight, although it was just mid-morning.
>> View photos from the Camp Fire and Woosley Fire, another raging fire in California.
“It sounded like a war,” Gronseth said, describing “booms” from propane tanks exploding.
She watched men hop out of their cars, get a hose and attempt to put out some of the fire themselves. But flames continued to pop up. Prepared for the worst, Gronseth texted her three adult children.
“I felt such peace. I wasn’t scared,” she said.
No matter how things turned out, Gronseth wanted her kids to know she loved them very much and asked them to put God first and obey Him.
“He sees the big picture,” Gronseth explained. “Sometimes people blame God for their loss, but we need to cling to Him.”
Gronseth said she realized if she rolled down her passenger window and reached out, her hand could’ve touched the flames. It was reported the fire was traveling as quickly as 80 football fields per minute.
In the middle of danger, Gronseth was instructed to go back, so she turned her car around and returned home. She’d already packed two of her most important possessions—her computer and Bible.
“My computer is my brain; my Bible [is] my lifeline,” she explained.
While trying to figure out how to “hunker down,” Gronseth’s neighbor interrupted: “We’ve gotta drive through the fence and hope there’s a way out on the other side.
“You have a big vehicle. You can push down the fence.”
After getting in an accident, she’d just gotten a new vehicle; one she referred to as a “gas guzzler.” Gronseth didn’t want to buy it, but felt God directed her to make the purchase anyway.
She now knew why.
“OK Lord, You’re going to have to help me navigate,” Gronseth prayed.
After a couple of attempts, her vehicle was able to push through the fence, also clearing the way for her neighbors’ car that got tangled in the fence.
It took Gronseth five hours to complete a four-mile drive to safety. On the way out, she read a burning town sign: “May you find Paradise to be all the name implies.”
Snapping out of the memory, Gronseth faced her mother and her daughter’s boyfriend, Robert Arrington.
“You start asking yourself, ‘What purpose does God have for you now?’ He definitely has a purpose for me,” she said.
“He had two opportunities to let me go [but] got me out. I was really looking forward to going home. … But I guess He isn’t ready for me to go yet.”
Arrington could relate to Gronseth’s narrow escape. He was sleeping at the time the fire creeped into Paradise and only survived thanks to a phone call from his worried mother in South Carolina.
“I opened my blinds and saw red, black and ash everywhere,” said Arrington, who’s lived in Paradise the past four years and has evacuated three times.
Arrington managed to throw a few things into his car as he left—a couple of baskets of dirty laundry and borrowed books from friends that he hoped to return safe and sound.
“You feel overwhelmed. Confused. Blessed. Confident of God’s covering. Scared. … Your emotions are all over the place,” Gronseth explained.
“I force myself to think about who He is,” she added. “You’ve got to keep trusting the truth in front of you, otherwise you’ll be waylaid.”
That truth is the hope of Jesus Christ—and the reason the RRT ministers in difficult times like this, providing a listening ear and prayer to those in need.
Gronseth is mostly saddened by the news that her daughter, son-in-law and four grandchildren have decided to relocate to Tennessee after the devastation.
Despite the loss of seven homes among her whole family, Gronseth recognizes she has an eternal home with God—”one that will never fade or burn,” she said.
“See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” —Isaiah 43:19
Do you have God’s peace in the midst of life’s uncertainties? Trust Him today.
Are you interested in becoming an RRT chaplain? Learn more.
