California Wildfires: Massive flames burn swath of destruction through town of Paradise

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The town of Paradise night sound like a nice place to be, but during these fires it is anything but. CGTN's Mark Niu went there to bring us this.

The Northern California town of Paradise turned into a living hell. This is ground zero for California's most destructive fire ever. Lives lost, homes destroyed - hardly anything is left standing.

RICK CARHART, PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICER CAL FIRE "Basically the vegetation is as dry as it's ever been recorded to the point where the issue that we are running into is pretty much every single ember that flies away from the fire and hits the ground catches on fire."

MARK NIU CHICO, CALIFORNIA "In a massive effort to help the tens of thousands of evacuees, communities are banding together. The East Avenue Church is one of 22 area pop-up shelters with no NGO affiliations and all volunteers."

DENISE GUNDERSON NURSE "And we walked in and said we're nurses, how can we help. And they just almost started crying."

Denise Gunderson evacuated her home, which is still intact as far as she knows. But her daughter's home was destroyed and the hospital she works at is so badly damaged it's not operating. She and a group of nurses, including her daughter, set up a triage system and are making regular rounds to check on the injured.

DENISE GUNDERSON NURSE "I'm a nurse. That's what you do. I've been here for five days. Probably ten 12 hours a day. Pretty much during those hours I don't think about what my daughter's lost, what I've lost. I walked into this place and immediately ten of the people I saw had been my past patients in a surgical unit. So I know these people."

90-year-old Paradise resident Patty Saunders narrowly escaped the fire.

PATTY SAUNDERS WILDFIRE SURVIVOR "Everywhere we went there was fire. Top, all around, all sides. In front and we kept stopping. The traffic would stop us and then we finally got to a place where you couldn't go forward or backward. But I looked up and I saw the fire department. A big sign Paradise and a beautiful angel fireman with a big hose. And he was spraying everything and making our cars cool off."

Patty is a former actress who played a nun in the Oscar-winning musical, The Sound of Music. She says her prayers were truly answered. And despite the tragic circumstances so many here face, they echo that same sentiment, taking some comfort in knowing that someone is watching over them. Mark Niu, CGTN, Chico, California.