The Camp Fire Teens Are Adults Now
Katie Elder got just a few normal months of high school before the fire came.
It was early November of 2018, her freshman year. Her mom woke her up around 7 a.m., and Katie began to get ready for what she thought would be a normal school day. Then they stepped outside and saw an orange sky. She felt the wind gust.
“We’ve lived in California all our lives. We’ve been around fires,” the now-18-year-old told me over the phone. “When you’re seeing sky like that and you’re feeling those winds, you know that you don’t have very much time.”
Katie and her family grabbed what pets and things they could and left their house for what would be the last time. Their home was destroyed, as was most of the town—lost to the Camp Fire, California’s deadliest and most destructive fire to date.
[Read: A deadly tsunami of fire]
The rest of freshman year was a and closed. That December, displaced students began classes—first in a former mall, then in a location nicknamed “The Fortress,” as the building was located on Fortress Street.
