SOMERVILLE, AUSTRALIA — As more than a thousand people fleeing bush fires in southeastern Australia arrived in Kasey Baines’ town Saturday, the American transplant could not help but think of her other home, across the Pacific Ocean: Paradise, California.

A little more than a year ago, Baines and her husband lost the Paradise home they had just started building to the Camp Fire, the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history. Her sister and parents also lost homes in the blaze, which killed 85 people and destroyed more than 18,000 structures across northern Butte County.

So when an Australian Navy ship carrying evacuees arrived in her town of Somerville, Victoria, on Saturday, Baines immediately related to their ordeal.

“I knew it must be really similar to what happened in the Camp Fire, where people arrived to Chico from Paradise and Magalia with nothing, disoriented and confused and unsure,” said Baines, who was born and raised in Paradise and has spent a few months there every year since moving to Australia more than a decade ago.

“It’s been a year and a bit for Camp Fire survivors, and I bet they would have a lot to say to help these people get through this hardest part, the initial part (of evacuating),’ Baines said.

So Baines posted to a Facebook group of Paradise and Magalia residents, asking them to offer advice and words of encouragement to people in Australia facing the same misery.

Almost immediately the comments began pouring in.

“This disaster in your life will not define you. You will make it a chapter of survival!” wrote Sasha P.

“If we could reach you from here, know we would wrap our arms around you,” wrote Lynn R.

Baines hand-wrote those messages onto a cloth banner, which she plans to send to evacuees from the Shire of Bairnsdale in Victoria once the fire is contained and the region reopens to residents.

Many of the evacuees brought to Somerville on Saturday were residents and vacationers fleeing Mallacoota, a small coastal town of about 1,000 in southeastern Australia, where people were forced to shelter on the beach from smoke and flames.

Nearly 15 million acres have burned across Australia, and at least two dozen people have died.

Baines decided to send the banner to Bairnsdale because of the similarities between Paradise and its small, rural towns.

“There’s a lot of similarities, in a small town, and it’s like watching the whole thing over again,” Baines said. “Small communities are often very closely knit, and once that tie is broken the entire feel of the town changes.”

Baines’ sister and parents have since moved out of Paradise, and she and her husband have grappled with whether to rebuild when so much of the town has changed.

“We had big plans to spend more time in Paradise, but now no one is there, so I’m struggling to find a balance of how to see my friends and family when I’m here, and they’re not there,” Baines said.

News of the bush fires in Australia also brought back memories of the Camp Fire for Kate McDonald, former director of hospice care for the Feather River Cancer Center in Paradise.

McDonald recalled scrambling to evacuate nearly 50 hospice patients with no advance warning. She and her staff were so busy then they had little or no time to tend to their own homes.

While much of her neighborhood burned, McDonald’s home and her animals were spared. She and her husband decided to sell their home and move to Chester.

“Even if you didn’t lose your home … we’re grieving the loss of our community, within a couple of hours,” McDonald said.

McDonald still returns to Paradise to care for her horses, and the town looks a bit different each time.

“It’s all about perspective. Some days, I’d drive up and get this feeling of hope, that this community I’ve lived in will thrive again, and other times, I would think, oh my gosh, this is a war zone,” McDonald said. “I think that’s what we’re all realizing: Paradise will never be the same, it’ll be a different Paradise.”

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A month up in flames: A look back at the devastation As difficult as it was to cope with so much change and loss, McDonald says she wants those in Australia to know they will make it through.

“What I kept on thinking was, ‘am I ever going to get back to myself?’ And you do, you’re just different,” she said.

A little over a year after the Camp Fire, Baines believes Paradise residents are ready to move past the narrative that they are victims of the fire.

“This could be one of the first times when (Paradise residents) aren’t receiving words of comfort, they’re giving it to other survivors, and it’s such a powerful step forward in their journey.”