Children return to school 3 weeks after California wildfire

Eight-year-old Bella Maloney woke up next to her little brother in a queen-size bed at a Best Western hotel and for breakfast ate a bagel and cream cheese that her mother brought up from the lobby.

And then she was off to school for the first time in nearly a month.

For Bella, brother Vance and thousands of other youngsters in Northern California who lost their homes and their classrooms in last month's deadly wildfire, life crept a little closer to normal Monday when school finally resumed in most of Butte County.

"They're ready to get back," 31-year-old Erica Hail said of her children. "I think they're sick of Mom and Dad." At school, "they get to have time alone in their own space and their own grade and they get to just be by themselves."
Mallory underwent radiation in October to treat a recurrence of brain cancer and showed no fear, Seaholm said, but "this situation with her house burning down has absolutely devastated her."