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About a week after the Camp Fire was fully contained, many who were displaced are now beginning long and frightening journeys. Alexandra S. Levine, a Metro reporter, was covering the aftermath. Here’s our conversation about what’s left, edited and condensed for space.

Jill Cowan: What was the scene like in Chico and Paradise?

Alexandra S. Levine: Paradise was a ghost town; they hadn’t let residents back into the evacuation areas yet, but they’re now gradually lifting those orders.

Chico is buzzing with people. The former Sears store at the Chico Mall continues to be a one-stop shop (set up by FEMA) where the displaced can do everything from replace their licenses to find support for trauma.

You wrote about two homeless populations in Butte County: those who were already dealing with homelessness and those who are newly displaced by the fire. Has that been a source of tension?

The relationship between the already-homeless population and the newly homeless is complicated. On the one hand, people I met from both groups said that some of the homeless are taking advantage of the disaster.

On the other hand, I did sense the camaraderie that some of the people I interviewed spoke about — the empathy for each other’s painful situations and the sharing of resources.

Did anyone you talked to who was displaced become more empathetic to those who have been homeless for longer?

James Brown has been on both sides of the coin: He was once homeless, but then, up until the fire, he had a mobile home in Magalia.

He was critical of those whom he said were homeless and taking advantage of the aid being delivered to the displaced. But he also talked about the give-and-take. The long homeless, for example, were teaching the newly homeless survival skills they might not otherwise know. (Like staying warm, staying safe.)

Butte County declared a homeless crisis in October. When I think about homelessness in California, I often picture more urban or suburban areas. Who were the people living in Butte County without housing?

There were roughly 2,000 homeless people living across Butte County before the Camp Fire. More than three-fourths of them had been in the county for upward of three years, and more than half had been there for more than 10, according to a 2017 report. The area was largely a retirement community.

With 14,000 residences lost, is there any plan for replenishing the housing stock?

It’s possible that the county will come up with a fix, but it will take years, and it’s a matter of days before winter arrives and the dire situation on the streets and in the shelters grows worse.

California Online

(Please note: We regularly highlight articles on news sites that have limited access for nonsubscribers.)

• Three weeks after the Camp Fire, students returned to school on Monday. [The Associated Press]

• A public mural project at the Fruitvale Bay Area Rapid Transit station honoring Oscar Grant, who was shot by a BART officer almost a decade ago, has become fraught as stakeholders debate how he should be depicted. Mr. Grant’s family is also pushing to rename the station for him. [The San Francisco Chronicle]

• A recent federal court ruling could serve as a turning point in how cities treat the homeless. At issue is a ban in Boise, Idaho, on sleeping on the streets. Such ordinances have been controversial in California and elsewhere. [Governing]

• Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office as Mexico’s new president on Saturday. Here’s what that means for Mexican-Americans and Los Angeles. [L.A. Taco]

• The mother of a woman killed in the Ghost Ship fire two years ago on Sunday wrote a heartbreaking account of the night her daughter died and everything that followed. [The Mercury News]

• Here’s a detailed timeline of law enforcement’s response to the Thousand Oaks shooting, which left 12 people dead. As mass shootings have become more common, such responses are being scrutinized as opportunities to learn and adapt. [LAist]

• After almost two months of picket lines, Marriott workers made a deal in San Francisco to end nationwide strikes. [The New York Times]

• A writer makes a plea to save the Oakland Coliseum, one of the best Brutalist structures in the Bay Area. It would be transformed into a tech campus and concert venue with a baseball diamond to commemorate its history, according to a proposal for a new stadium. [Curbed San Francisco]

• The Los Angeles Times released its list of “101 Restaurants We Love” Monday night. It was the first after the food critic Jonathan Gold’s death, and his memory loomed large. [The Los Angeles Times]

• Greta Lee, an actress and comedian known for roles on “Girls” and “Inside Amy Schumer” talked about Asian-American representation and the dark comedy she’s codeveloping for HBO, called “KTown,” about a family of kingpins in L.A.’s Koreatown. [The Cut]

• A dispute between two prominent families threatened to block San Francisco productions of “Dear Evan Hansen” and “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.” But a judge ruled that the shows will go on. [The New York Times]

And Finally …

How many times have you picked up sushi to go?

The answer for me is a lot of times. And whether it’s from a Japanese market like Mitsuwa, where my family gets big party trays on holidays, or from a grocery store (hey, sometimes I get desperate), the sushi has invariably been packed with a little green sheet of plastic cut to look like grass.

I’d never thought much about it. But it turns out that little piece of plastic (which is single use and costs 0.6 cents per sheet) has a long history.

The grass is both ornamental and functional. Chef Masa Sasaki, of Sasaki restaurant in San Francisco, told the illustrator Wendy MacNaughton about how people used to use orchid leaves to keep foods in bento boxes separate and why chefs now use bamboo leaves when they can. (They’re antimicrobial!)

California Today goes live at 6 a.m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: [email protected].

California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from U.C. Berkeley.

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