ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. -- A St. Johns County woman has a sister who escaped the wildfires in Northern California, but just barely.
Melissa Kurtz lives in St. Johns County. Thursday morning, Tina, her sister, texted her as she was evacuating from Paradise, California where she lives.
"I got a text from my sister at 9:30 that said, 'I don't know if we're going to make it out of here. I love you,'" Kurtz said.
Tina, like so many, were stuck in traffic.
"The fire was getting closer and closer," Kurtz said. "I think the reality hit her that this could be the end. "
Tina made it out with her fiance, but so many people did not escape the fire. People died even at the end of her street, Kurtz said.
"She sent me a text that says 'They found bodies in cars on Edgewood Lane. They're bulldozing cars off the roads that burned, some with bodies and some without bodies.'"
Tina used to live in Jacksonville Beach, joined the Navy, and now lives in California.
She and her fiance lost everything.
They're now living in a tent in a warehouse her fiance owns in Chico, just outside of Paradise.
And other people who did make it out, "have nothing," Kurtz said.
First Coast News had asked Kurtz to do an interview about her sister days ago, but she was too nervous to go on camera.
"And then my sister started crying and said, 'you need to to get the word out.'"
The word that thousands of people have nothing left.
"These people have nowhere to go, nowhere to live, no clothes, no blankets. They need sleeping bags, everything," Kurtz said. "She said, 'please do the interview so people will know.'"
"My sister feels so blessed to be alive and have a place to live," Kurtz said. "She wants us to put it out there that there's so much more need."
Kurtz has set up a bank account that her sister can access in California so that she can buy people supplies in her town. Kurtz also wants to organize a collection effort on the First Coast to send supplies to California.