Paradise wildfires hero vows to SHOOT anyone stealing

A MAN who heroically managed to save his own house and neighbours’ homes from the deadly Camp Fire is now patrolling the devastated community to protect it from looters.

Keith Mapes, 38, has placed hand-painted posters around the obliterated town of Paradise warning “Looters will be shot” and “I see you - looters beware.”

The brave dad-of-two was one of just a handful of residents to stay put in the town as the fatal blaze ripped through.

He used a hose and a sprinkler system to put out flames before resorting to a leaf blower as the fiery inferno shut off water in the town of Paradise, Northern California, killing 56.

Mapes, whose home is one of the few still standing on his street, is now patrolling the area - not for fire - but for looters preying on the already disaster-hit community.

He told Sun Online: “We’ve had a problem with looters - it’s the last thing you could imagine happening here after we’ve lost our whole town to this fire, but unfortunately there are some unscrupulous individuals out there who are going to kick people while they’re down.

“And to those people I give a strong, strong warning. It might not look like it but there are people out here still, people like me who are defending their neighbourhoods and their homes.

“Call it what you will, but when you see those signs, be warned. I am armed.

“These are my people and I will do whatever I can to defend them and their property."

His warning comes a day after Pink’s husband warned any looters hoping to ransack homes left vacant in the wake of the Woolsey Fire – try it and you’ll be shot.

Mapes said that he didn't know “how long it will be before people can return here but I know it will be an extended amount of time just because of the sheer devastation.

“This area is still very dangerous with falling trees, power lines. Our whole town, our whole community has gone, it’s destroyed.

“People here have lost everything, not just homes, but schools, services, the entire infrastructure.

“My focus now is going to be on the kids and getting their schools up and running - if anyone wants to help us that's what we need now."

He said that rebuilding the schools will "help provide for our future - because if we don’t, we lose it.”

Firefighter Mapes, who was off-duty when the fire hit, was one of just a few people we saw while walking through the town - which is now more reminiscent of a war zone.

Aside from first responders and utility workers, the once bustling town of Paradise is like a ghost town; thick smog fills the air, fallen trees still smoulder and ash rains down on empty streets.

Rows-upon-rows of houses are completely decimated, and streets are lined with burnt-out cars - some which look like they were trying to escape when the fire halted them in their tracks.

The local McDonald's, Burger King and KFC are completely burnt-out apart from their signs and even the entire Safeway’s supermarket has disappeared.

Schools have been reduced to a tangled wreckage of kids' tables and chairs and charred swings and slides where children once played.

Mapes revealed that during the chaotic evacuation, kids were taken off a burning school bus and thrown into passing cars as thousands of residents tried to escape, while brave firefighters grouped together those left behind in car parks, and tried to protect them from walls of fire.

Re-living the day of the fire, which hit Paradise last Thursday, he said: “I woke up early in the morning to get my older daughter to school - she’s five.

“I noticed something blotting out the sun and when I went outside I saw the smoke column coming up over our house.

“I immediately told my wife and she picked up the evacuation boxes and loaded the kids in the car. I sent her up hill because I knew the entire town would try go downhill.

“That was right about the time the first fire hit across the street so I went and put that out and told my wife to get out of here.

“Then I just did everything I could to prepare - I knew exactly what was coming but it was never an option for me to leave - it was an emotional decision.

“I got on the roof with a leaf blower, blew all the leaves away, then did the front. I put sprinklers on the roof and while we had water I had those running.

“For about half an hour we had water and I used hoses to stop the fires, then when the water cut out across the town I resorted to chainsaws, rakes, leaf blowers and shovels to stop the flames coming near the house.

“The flames were all around but I wasn’t scared; I’ve survived things before. It was hard for people to get out but there were plans in place for evacuation - it wasn’t any fault of the town or the authorities - Paradise is flawed by design."

Mapes added: “You can’t get 30,000 people to get in their cars and leave right now and expect it to be smooth. But the priority for the firefighters was to shelter the people who were stuck here in place.

“They gathered people, huddled them together and then surrounded them with the fire hoses and the engines.

“There were hundreds of people - and wherever there was people, running for it, driving for it - they were just pulling them into the large parking lots and protecting the area the people were in.

“It would have been pretty terrifying when that flame front went past. Life was everybody’s first priority and I’m proud of the locals and the first responders. Everybody came here as fast as they could.

“There were evacuation notices; people were warned but some people were too old or sick to evacuate and some people decided they didn’t want to. Some folks just couldn’t move.

“There was a burnt-out school bus where they were just grabbing kids and throwing them in cars.

“People were doing everything they could to get people out of Paradise. You never know how you’ll behave under the gun like that - it was full on survival mode.”

Despite the best efforts of firefighters and cops, around 300 people remain missing, according to a list released on Wednesday night, and law enforcement officials told Sun Online it was becoming increasingly unlikely those people would now be found alive.