The Camp Fire’s damage goes beyond what satellites can show

That provides a challenge for aerial imagery: With trees and smoke in the way, it’s difficult to see the scope of the damage. Cal Fire crews have been assessing buildings at ground level to see what survived and what was destroyed. That data, combined with a satellite view provided by DigitalGlobe, gives the clearest picture of what happened in Paradise.

Kilcrease Circle

It’s easy to see the damage in Kilcrease Circle, a large mobile home park within Paradise. Just a small cluster of homes are still standing. In the trees just outside the neighborhood, where houses are a little farther apart, the damage was just as extensive.

Here’s the same “after” image with buildings highlighted. Shapes in orange were destroyed. Buildings in white are still standing. This building data comes from a Microsoft dataset of 125 million building shapes, which does not cover all U.S. buildings, so there may be more buildings that are not marked here.

Southeast Paradise

This neighborhood at the southeast edge of the town was nearly wiped out, with only a few buildings left standing.

Southwest Paradise

Some commercial buildings and a school in this large area in the southwest portion of the town appear to have survived the fire, but the residential areas did not fare as well.