- I'd first learned about the fire
a little after seven in the morning.
I collected my cat carriers.
- The things that you take, it's kind of odd.
The logic escapes you at that time when you're...
- You wanna know what my husband...?
He packs up the freezer contents.
He packs up the ground beef and the steak.
And his mentality...
- He looks at me and he says,
"What are you doing?
We've gotta get outta here."
And I said, "I'm trying to find our phone chargers."
- Yeah, of course, they're on the key ring
associated with the car keys and the other things.
So that's kind of a good indicator.
- People flew to their families,
they ran to their safeties.
But we all had our keys, keys, phone, wallet.
It's what we all do.
- [Reporter] An 800-pound sculpture of a phoenix,
crafted from thousands of keys,
unveiled at the Butte Resiliency Center
in Paradise this morning.
Mercer says her year-long project was...
- [Reporter] The sculpture is beautiful. It was donated;
these keys were from homes that did not survive the fire.
We're talking about more than 14,000.
And then the wings... - Mercer says there are
still reminders all around.
- There's so much.
Lived on the streets a lot, in my youth,
and stayed at a lot of friends' houses,
slept in some dugouts at schools.
But when I was 15 years old, my dad said, "Hey,
in 48 hours I'm gonna jump in our U-Haul
and move to Paradise, California."
And I said, "Ha, ha, there's no place called Paradise."
Got in the U-Haul with my parents that I,
at that time, didn't have the closest relationship with
and rolled up to a sign that says,
"May Paradise be all its name implies."
And, at 15, when you're scared and nervous
it was such a welcoming sign.
And we ended up here at the Lantern Motel.
And this is where I went to high school.
And the diner behind us is where I ate my meals at night.
They gave me food, they gave me shelter,
they gave me school, they gave me...
I couldn't have done anything,
I couldn't have graduated with a 4.0 in college,
if I didn't have the support of this town.
I would've just shredded up
and continued to be a drug addict and failed.
It would've been horrible.
- What is this like?
- I just, every time I'm around it
I feel like I can just hear people.
I can just hear all their stories.
I hear holidays with relatives
fighting and loving each other all at once.
It's like I hear kids playing in the front yard.
I hear that some of these keys were never even used
because we all left our doors unlocked.
The fire moved at about 60-80 miles an hour.
And it came over the mountain like a beast.
It looked like a beast.
And then propane fire, fireworks,
'cause everything's on propane.
So it just sounded like bombs going off.
- It was about 10:00 in the morning
and the power goes out.
And just plunged us into the most dense blackness
I've ever experienced.
Oh dear, there's wind whipping up.
(fire crackling)
10:00 in the morning.
Not happy with that wind.
- When the power went out, I was like,
"Okay, we're in trouble."
We didn't hear sirens, fire department,
police. Nobody was here.
We heard nothing, it was just so quiet here.
Except we could hear the ammunition
from people's homes exploding.
We could hear...
- The propane tanks.
- The propane, yes, propane tanks exploding
was just...I still hear it.
I just, I took a short little video
of the trees out here on fire.
And then I went into our house and...
- It was time to go.
- I received a call about 8:12 in the morning.
All I heard was my dad say, "I'm running,
I'm coming to you."
And it was such cryptic words.
And my stepmother, "We're trying to come,
we're trying to come."
I just remember calling, and calling,
and calling, and calling, and calling.
- Take a look at "Apocalypse Now"
and when the F-35s drop the napalms
on buildings, you have it.
We had walls of sheer flame.
There is nothing but sheer flame.
There is no sparks, there's sheer flames.
And you're 10 feet and you're watching cars melt,
and people rolling off the side of the road,
running away from their cars.
And cars blowing up because they can't move.
You're in live-action PTSD
is my best way to describe it to you.
- My parents had ended up about four and a half,
five hours later at my house.
My dad had sweatpants that were burnt
and he didn't even have his dentures in his mouth.
The realization that they probably just lost their home
and their animal was profound.
So we just sat, and sat, and sat.
And at that moment my dad reached into his sweatpants
and he threw his keys out.
I knew I had to make it.
It was almost euphoric.
- She's like, "I'm gonna build a phoenix."
- Right off the wall.
- And we're like, "Okay.
And how are you gonna do that?"
"I don't know, I'm just gonna do it
'cause it seems like it's the right thing to do."
- I couldn't handle that so many people
would be holding this residue in their hands
and being angry at it.
Put out a little flyer on Facebook,
thinking wow, social media's either
gonna attack me or benefit me.
I got 'em in mail, I got 'em face-to-face,
people were showing up at my house.
I would meet people in tents and distribution centers.
I mean, I ended up putting about 19,000 miles
on my truck in just 11 months.
I remember the first time I got a call
for a family of a deceased.
I met 'em in a hotel where they were staying
after they had already lost their family.
It was just so sad.
And they just handed me a picture,
and they handed me a key, and they said,
"I know that this needs to go with you."
And then the responsibility became pretty immense.
- I gave her my work key.
I gave her the key for our home here.
- I actually gave her the house key,
and I gave her two of my other relatives',
I have about six in this community.
- It's also very emotional when you
decide to give that up.
It's not just about, "Okay, here's my keys."
That was our home.
- I think I'm one of the few people
that hasn't given my keys.
I'm not ready to take mine off my keyring yet.
So I still have mine.
And I don't know that I will part with them.
- So no one actually did give them to her right away.
- It took you some time.
- It took a while. - Yeah.
- Can you talk for a second
about what it was like to see that phoenix completed?
- I don't even know if I can express what it feels like.
It's beautiful.
It means a lot.
- Yup.
- A lot of loss.
The phoenix is symbolic of rising from,
and I understand that logically,
but to see all those keys.
A lot of loss.
- When I saw the phoenix it was this
magnificent sculpture that Jess had put together.
And I could see the keys at a distance
and then the closer I got to it,
the more emotional I became.
And Jess was right there, and she just
came and embraced me, and we just stood there
next to her beautiful artwork, just holding each other,
and just crying together.
That's what an amazing person she is.
She wasn't in the distance, she was right there.
- I think for me personally that this piece
from me to my town is overcoming anger.
I struggle with anger a lot.
And I've never been so mad at something in my life.
But I could never change it.
And I recognize that I'll never be able to change
or put anybody back together nearly
like a tenth of the way back to whole.
I just love this.
I love it, like I'm in love with it,
more than like a person.
I should check in about that.
I've never had anybody trust me to this level.
And they didn't even know me.