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I don’t fool as easily as you do!
Our ranch is in the middle of the Stanislaus NF.
I’ve done ground burns in dense forest, and know how far up one has to clear the ladder wood.
The trees in Paradise don’t qualify! Too much low ladder for any kind of fire to have gone through on the ground.
Take a drive through Paradise and you’ll be very convinced.
The structures were ignited from the air. so were the cars. Ground fires rarely do significant damage to cars unless they are in dense brush.
The houses were ignited by embers from the wildfire upwind. Trees cannot, in general, be ignited by embers. Some trees burned because they were close to houses that burned. Cars were mainly ignired by flames. The burned cars that I saw were mostly near houses or flammable vegetation or other burning items.
Basically the town was hit by an ember storm from wildfire upwind which was driven by brush (ladder fuel) and fully burning trees. Was it possible that some locations were burned intentionally/? Anything is possible. It's not likely. It is likely that they had to let a lot of houses burn because there were far too many to put out. The firefighters were mainly doing rescue only at that point.