Some are buoyed by faith, some by good fire insurance, some by both. On Thursday, they came together to eat

What is there to be thankful for after you lose everything?

'He's like Al Capone': turkey on the loose ruffles feathers in Rhode Island town Read more

On Thursday, residents of Paradise pondered this question on their first Thanksgiving since a fire incinerated the town of 27,000, killing at least 84 people and turning most homes to ash. Large numbers are now homeless, living in evacuation centres across northern California, some camping in tents even as the weather turns frigid and rainy.

In the nearby town of Chico, prominent chefs José Andrés, Tyler Florence and Guy Fieri offered free meals and 8,000lbs of turkey. Volunteers included firefighters who participated in the evacuation and Virginia Partain, 64, a Paradise high school teacher whose home burned down.

“I lost everything so what else am I going to be doing?” she asked, wearing the tie-dyed turtleneck she escaped in.

Play Video 1:02 ‘I just want to break down’: the California wildfire victims living in a parking lot – video

Partain was only able to save her cats, a blanket and her students’ college admission essays. But she described a feeling of intense gratitude for the bare fact of survival. “I sat with my cats last night and I just held them,” she said, “and I thought, it’s a a new chapter, a new normal, we just have to start a new life.”

At evacuation centers this week, several people said it was Paradise itself to which they owed thanks, because it had been more than just the houses that comprised it.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Virginia Partain, of Paradise. Photograph: Alastair Gee for the Guardian

Charlene Perry, 58, said that before the fire it had seemed that the heavens were smiling on her. After she had been homeless for 18 months in Chico, a pastor and his wife helped her find a trailer in a senior citizens’ mobile home park in Paradise. Housewarming gifts were showered on her.

“I was being so blessed,” she said. “Church ladies were giving me things – a beautiful bedspread, pillow, a plate set even though I had a plate set, I was being so blessed left and right. There was a lot of love. People were so happy I finally found a place to live.”

When the fire came, all she escaped with were some blankets she had crocheted. She remembers seeing a neighbour at the mobile home park, engulfed in smoke, seemingly too stunned to move. There was no time to help him and she does not know if he survived. Now, again, she is homeless.

Don Martin, 62, was also unsurprisingly short on warm feelings.

“I’d planned to die there and I kind of wished I had,” he said of his trailer in Paradise. “It was just right for me and the dog.”

A former dental technician and truck driver, Martin suffers from ailments including diabetes and peripheral neuropathy. He has a morphine pump hooked into his spine.

“I haven’t had anything to feel grateful for in a long time,” he said. He described himself as a kind of hermit who was nevertheless thrilled to live in the wooded, peaceful Paradise area with his pit bull-chihuahua mix, Ralph, and seven cats.

All the cats died in the fire that destroyed his trailer and in the evacuation center he picked up the norovirus. At least that, he said, “was not as bad as they say.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Don Martin and his dog, Ralph. Photograph: Alastair Gee for the Guardian

Faith – and good fire insurance – buoyed Barbara Kramer, 79, whose two-bedroom home and car were destroyed.

“Apparently, I lost everything but I haven’t lost anything,” she said. “We’re Christians and everything we have belongs to the Lord so if it’s gone, it’s just things.”

Kyrie Irving apologizes after profane dismissal of Thanksgiving Read more

She knew that to some, that could sound flippant. “They say, ‘People lost everything they worked their whole lives for and you shouldn’t make light of it’, and I’m not. That’s just me. I don’t feel any loss or devastation or sadness. And we have fire insurance, we’re taken care of.”

The insurance company, she said, had booked her and her husband into a Hilton for two weeks.

On Wednesday, Butte county sheriff Kory Honea said the list of those unaccounted for had increased to 870. Authorities stressed that many people on the list could be safe and unaware they had been reported missing.

Also at the Thanksgiving lunch on Thursday was fire battalion chief Ken Lowe, who led five engines into the community a few hours after the first flames were reported, and saved hundreds of lives by sheltering residents in the lee of the trucks.

Lowe is a man to whom thanks are owed. But he was not on a pedestal – he was behind the buffet, serving food.

“For us to be here two weeks later,” he said, “watching them come in and serving them a hot meal, that there is a honor for me.”