Mr. Jeys listed his pets as his top reason for staying. He said it dawned on him quickly that it would be impossible to evacuate with them all, especially because his Mazda pickup remained broken down and stranded in front of his house.

“I didn’t want to be a burden on anyone who was in their own car trying to flee,” Mr. Jeys said in an interview outside his home. “And I had my strategy for making a stand to protect my home.”

That plan of action involved a garden hose. Mr. Jeys said he used it to spray the roof of his one-story home and extinguish nearby embers. For those patches of fire beyond the reach of his hose, he stomped on them with his cowboy boots.

Mr. Jeys acknowledged that the fact that his home was made largely of cinder block instead of wood or drywall may have made the structure more fire resistant. Still, he pointed at the dry pine needles in his yard — fuel for a fast-moving wildfire — and wondered why they didn’t burn.

A fire crew in Paradise also lent a hand, extinguishing a blaze that was ripping through an alleyway behind his dwelling. From his front porch, Mr. Jeys said he could still see nearby structures going up in flames. He glimpsed squirrels and birds scurrying along the ground on an empty lot in front of his home, as if escaping the heat above.

“I woke up the next day and Paradise looked a little like Dresden,” said Mr. Jeys, clad entirely in black from head (felt brimmed hat) to toe (those cowboy boots).