Poor seniors were likeliest to die as Camp fire raged
PARADISE, Calif. - Dorothy Mack had crippling back pain and deteriorating eyesight. Helen Pace used a walker and breathed from an oxygen tank. Teresa Ammons suffered a stroke in 2017 and couldn't drive.
Although each woman had a different frailty, their final circumstances were strikingly similar: They were all seniors on fixed incomes, they all lived alone, and they all died when the Camp fire roared through their mobile home park.
Experts say the incineration of Paradise, a sleepy town of 27,000 nestled in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, is a case study in what can go wrong when a landscape that's prone to wildfire is disproportionately populated by those who are least likely to escape.
Like the women who died in Ridgewood Mobile Home Park, most of the 86 people who died in the fire were seniors. Of the 69 bodies that have been positively identified, 53 were over the age of 65 - or 77 percent.
This grim fact comes as no surprise to those
