“Mom didn’t want to leave,” Brad Weldon said, recalling the day he desperately tried to save his house and his 90-year-old mother from the Camp Fire in Northern California.
The deadly wildfire wiped out almost all of the homes in their town of Paradise on Nov. 8.
As neighbors quickly got in their cars and fled the burning town, his immobile and blind mother was determined to stay.
“She said ‘I’ll stay here and burn. I ain’t got no place to go,'” Brad Weldon said. “And I ain’t gonna let that happen.”
Soon, he found they were among the last ones in town, and there was not much time left until the fire would come raging through the neighborhood.
With help of his roommate, Weldon took quick action to set up a defense line.
“Immediately, we ran outside and started cleaning everything we could—all the leaves, everything away from the house,” Weldon said.
Using garden hoses and five-gallon buckets, Weldon and his friend worked day and night keeping the flames off the property.
“For 24 hours, just stayed diligent and did what we could,” Weldon said, “At the height of it, it was pretty bad. We were laying on the ground hosing ourselves down so we didn’t burn up.”
Surrounded by houses engulfed by flames and hearing multiple explosions, Weldon told the San Francisco Chronicle that he felt like he was “fighting an elephant with a piece of spaghetti.”
With the worst of the firestorm coming right at them, Weldon said, “Then all of a sudden the wind changed and poof it went the other way.”
Weldon’s house was saved but others were not so lucky.
“I had a lot of angels watching after us that night,” he said. His house is the last one left on Lisa Lane in Paradise. Meanwhile, his mother softly said, “I believe in prayer.”
On Tuesday, Paradise was still under evacuation orders, which means Weldon has not been allowed to freely commute in and out of town. He managed to survive the fire, but his supplies are running lower every day.
“They told me if I leave I will not be allowed back, no matter what,” said Weldon, who set up a sign on the driveway asking for water and gas.
As a result, Weldon and his family can do nothing but wait for the evacuation order to be lifted. He hopes people will come back and eventually rebuild the neighborhood.
“It’s kind of heartbreaking to know that no one has anything left that you loved. I just want them all to know how much I feel.”
