In the years before California’s most recent drought broke, the region was beginning to be plagued by constant fires, some extremely large. In particular - the Camp Fire (2018) - began north of Paradise, CA, and rapidly spread south-west through a number of small towns lying in a valley between two waterways, West Branch Feather River to the East and Butte Creek to the West. Both rivers are in steep ravines, largely confining the town’s emergency evacuation routes to the SW. Essentially the evacuees where trapped by the terrain and chased by the fire, with no lateral escape.