CHICO, Calif. Last Thursday morning, Corey Gonzales woke to a pounding at his door.

When he opened the door, his neighbor was there, insisting he evacuate. Behind him, the sky was unfamiliar black, yellow and orange. End-of-days stuff.

We might be back, it wont be that big a deal, Gonzales, 28, told his fiancee as they packed a bag of clothes.

He thought he was only evacuating temporarily. Like so many residents of Paradise, California, who have been displaced by the ongoing Camp fire , he hoped that perhaps his familys home could be saved. But as the hours passed, and refugees poured out of Paradise in cars and buses and on foot, it became clear that the wind-driven fire was moving faster and faster.

That night, Gonzales gathered his family. We should start to be OK with the fact that maybe our stuff is gone, he told them.

Now, just over a week later, the blaze that drove Gonzales out of Paradise has killed at least 71 people and become the most destructive fire in California history. More than 1,000 people are believed to be missing. And as the adrenaline of the evacuation has faded, the grim reality of indefinite displacement has set in.

* * *

Neighbors saved Vivian, too. Her next-door neighbors son woke up the 80-year-old Paradise resident and drove her, and her two cats, out of town before the fire hit. She believes she would not have survived the wind-driven, fast-moving flames if her neighbors hadnt helped.

Without them, I would have been ash, she said. I grabbed the cats, my toothbrush, my comb, and put on my sweats, and got in the car. That was it.

A week later, she found out her house was gone.

Vivian now sleeps next to her two crated cats on a cot at the makeshift shelter at East Ave Church in Chico. Despite the grief of losing her house, she has found some gratitude in not being one of the hundreds of evacuees sick with the norovirus thats plaguing the shelter and many others in town.

Libby Andresen, another woman in the East Ave Church shelter, has not been as lucky. She shares a mattress with her elderly mother, and told HuffPost that theyd been moved through the shelter twice to avoid getting the virus. By Thursday, a week after Andresen lost her Paradise home in the fire, she was bedridden and sick.

Before the medical team was able to provide assistance and a barrier, and before the National Guard sent in medical and quarantine tents on Friday morning, there was no dignity for anyone, Andresen said, as more and more people began throwing up and getting diarrhea, two of the norovirus symptoms. Volunteers had to help clean up, and later bleach, the floors that had been contaminated with human waste. Several evacuees have taken to wearing adult diapers as a precaution, as portable toilets become filthy and inaccessible.

Medical staff from the shelter told HuffPost that while many evacuees showed symptoms, they had not yet confirmed whether they had norovirus.

As soon as the first person got sick, we quarantined them as best we could in these very austere conditions with the very limited resources at our disposal, Elisabeth Gundersen, a volunteer registered nurse, told HuffPost.

We did a lot of grassroots fundraising to purchase the necessary supplies to quarantine folks and we also submitted requests to the Department of Public Health and to CalMat. Understandably both agencies were completely overwhelmed and did their very best to meet our needs as quickly as they could, but resources were a challenge for everyone, she said.