PARADISE, Butte County — More than 30,000 people fled for their lives Thursday as a late-season wildfire swept across this town in the Sierra foothills, incinerating numerous homes and businesses and prompting desperate rescues of residents trapped inside buildings and on clogged evacuation routes. The blaze exploded to more than 18,000 acres in just the first eight hours, adding to a catastrophic two years of wildfires in California that have raised new questions about how the state will cope with a warmer and drier climate. Smoke turned the daytime sky black in the community of 27,000 that sits 15 miles east of Chico and 80 miles north of Sacramento.
