Displaced by Park Fire, Some Wonder if They’ll Have a Home to Return to

Paul Mozzino was working an afternoon shift at a Trader Joe’s grocery store in Chico, Calif., last week when he heard a chorus of phones pinging simultaneously with alerts about a nearby wildfire.

“Oh God, not again,” Mr. Mozzino, who had evacuated from a fire before, recalled thinking at the time.

Later that day, he learned that his home in Humboldt Highlands was under an evacuation order. So he packed his favorite guitars and enough clothes to last him roughly a week, and hit the road. After driving just a mile, he looked over the ridge and saw a fiery red landscape.

“It looked like a volcano,” he said, “like something out of ‘Hellraiser.’”

Mr. Mozzino, 63, is just one of over 8,000 residents in Northern California under evacuation orders, across Butte and Tehama Counties, prompted by the rapidly spreading Park fire. The blaze has burned over 360,000 acres since it was ignited on Wednesday.

Billows of orange-gray smoke and blustery flames have turned tree-lined roads and wooden homes into barren patches of dirt coated with ash. At least 100 structures have been destroyed, and about 4,200 were threatened. And the fire, which was about 12 percent contained early Monday, could possibly burn for several weeks.