Page 379 - Peterson 85 Years and Going Strong
P. 379

  Peterson’s Chico crew and their signed commitment to putting their customers first.
PETERSON’S CHICO STORE RESPONDS
Down in Chico, Peterson personnel cleared equipment out of their front yard to make room for whatever might be coming next. “The CHP blocked off Hwy 99 right in front of our store,” says Cory Ohlhausen, shop foreman at the time and one of the fire’s evacuees. “They were allow- ing people to turn around there, and many of them turned into our place. People were coming with everything they had grabbed—horses, trail- ers, campers, families, valuables—and they were all shaken up. We weren’t really set up for people to stay but it gave them a place to regroup.”
“At one point, CAL FIRE’s website listed six hun- dred fire engines and over one hundred dozers on the job,”says Ohlhausen.“It was crazy.During that period, we repaired fire dozers and equipment that the CHP let through their blockade. We mainly did repairs for fire contractors, and parts access. It was such a shock to the community that I don’t recall any local contractors being concerned about when they would get their own equipment back.”
The shop’s workload ramped up even more during
the cleanup phase. “We were extremely busy,” recalls Ohlhausen. “We haven’t had any slow peri- ods since the Oroville Dam incident [Feb 2017]. We were taking care of all Kiewit’s machines off the dam. Then throw fire contractors into the mix, each with a minimum of twenty crews. So we defi- nitely had to shuffle the jobs around and work late nights to get it all done. But we made it work.”
As a life-long resident of Oroville, Ohlhausen has seen plenty of fires. “I’ve definitely noticed a trend in the last several years. There have always been fires, but not life-threatening fires like this one. Paradise had the perfect conditions for a crazy big fire. In Pulga Canyon where it started, it was like a wind tunnel as it crested the ridge into Paradise. That first day was definitely a rescue mission versus firefighting. Sirens were going off all day long. He- licopters started dropping water on homes to help people escape from being trapped. When it was safe to fly, airplanes started dropping fire retardant. It took around three weeks to get this fire out. The smoke went all the way down into Sacramento and the Bay Area. For weeks afterward, if you walked into stores in downtown Chico, everybody had a story to tell about what happened to them.”
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