PARADISE, Calif. — Unlike a typical holiday food giveaway, the ham, mashed potatoes and green beans packed in bags at Paradise Alliance Church came with a grim reminder of an even deeper need.
Next to the counter where hundreds picked up meals, a table had been set up by an envoy from United States Bankruptcy Court. His mission: to make sure residents had a chance to seek compensation from California’s largest utility for wildfires like the one that laid waste to their town.
Victims have until Tuesday to submit claims against Pacific Gas & Electric, which filed for bankruptcy protection in January after amassing tens of billions of dollars in liabilities from years of wildfires. The court overseeing the case assigned Michael Kasolas, an accountant, to track down those eligible. But some are homeless and hard to find. Some have moved out of state. Some have struggled to submit the paperwork and have not known whom to call.
So Mr. Kasolas and a team working with him are racing to find as many as possible. A recent day’s efforts included taping fliers to boxes at a neighborhood pizzeria, meeting with wildfire response agencies and working the food line at the church.
“Trying to find these people, especially those outside of California, is challenging,” said Mr. Kasolas, president of Michael Kasolas & Company, a Bay Area accounting firm. “We’re just trying to find everybody.”
That could mean thousands, even tens of thousands of people — many of whom have scattered across the country.
As daunting as it would be, a federal judge charged with estimating PG&E’s total wildfire liability said that “someone should be going door to door” to get victims to file claims, after it was estimated in early October that little more than 30,000 people had submitted paperwork before the initial deadline that month.
The bankruptcy court gave victims more time as lawyers argued that there might be as many as 70,000 more victims who should file claims for their losses and suffering.
“All I’m saying is it would be a heartbreaking shame if even 10 percent of the eligible victims don’t file claims for whatever reason,” the judge, James Donato, said. “If we’re talking about 50 percent not filing, that’s — that’s intolerable.”
It has been just over a year since the Camp Fire, the most devastating wildfire in California history, destroyed the town of Paradise and killed 85 people. Investigators attributed the fire to an equipment failure on a 100-year-old tower owned by PG&E.
Signs of catastrophe endure: the towering pine trees with burns from top to bottom, the whirring of chain saws, the charred cars still firmly planted on roadsides, the barren lots where houses stood.
Though filing a claim might seem an obvious step for victims trying to rebuild a normal life, it hasn’t been so easy. The emotional trauma has weighed as heavily as the property losses themselves.
Some have had difficulty staying focused enough to get the paperwork done.
Karen Gowins lost her home in the Paradise fire, along with family heirlooms. All that escaped destruction were six trees and her family’s pontoon boat.
Ms. Gowins was chosen to be a victims’ representative in the bankruptcy case, and she has been working with Mr. Kasolas to help people file claims.
“Even answering the questions like ‘What’s your name?’ is difficult for some,” she said. “It’s been draining. My heart is breaking for my community.”
In November, the judge overseeing the bankruptcy case, Dennis Montali, made it Mr. Kasolas’s job to find victims and help them file claims. He and his staff have mailed tens of thousands of fliers that have included information in English and Spanish. They have published advertisements in newspapers and on radio and television, and posted notices on Facebook and Instagram. They have opened a call center to provide information and assist with claims. And they have created a website for people filing on their own.
“We’re doing all we can,” Mr. Kasolas said. “I just don’t have airplanes with banners, yet.”
At stake is a pot of money worth $13.5 billion, a figure negotiated between PG&E and victims’ representatives in the bankruptcy case. The settlement divides those funds among victims, their lawyers, and federal and state agencies that responded to the disaster.
The parties in the bankruptcy continue to spar over whether the money will be all in cash or half in cash and half in PG&E stock.
On the weekslong journey Mr. Kasolas was commissioned to undertake, he and his staff have directly encountered only a few victims who have not filed claims. But he cited other signs of headway: The team has received more than 700 phone calls, recently fielding 40 a day, along with thousands of visits to the website. Since the deadline was extended, he said, 4,370 fire-related claims have been filed.
“More often, it’s someone who knows someone who hasn’t filed a claim,” said Danielle Foreman, a senior majoring in cellular and molecular biology at California State University, Chico, about 15 miles west of Paradise.
Ms. Foreman, 22, was hired by Mr. Kasolas to help spread the word about filing claims. She spent her day taping fliers to pizza boxes at Red Lion Pizza in Magalia, just north of Paradise, and handing out others to churches and agencies, hoping it would prompt even one more person to file a claim.
But time is short, and a bigger problem persists.
“We know there was significant post-fire displacement — people had to move away,” said Steven Skikos, a lawyer appointed by the court to represent victims’ interests. “But we don’t know the specifics of who ended up where. That’s a real problem.”
An analyst at Chico State provided Mr. Kasolas with a map produced from United States Postal Service information showing that wildfire victims had moved to almost every state, with significant clusters in the Pacific Northwest, Arizona, Texas and Tennessee. But the map does not provide addresses.
For its part, PG&E said it had employed a broad campaign to ensure that wildfire victims received information about filing claims, including newspaper, magazine, radio, social media and digital advertisements. The utility sent emails to about four million customers and claim forms by mail to more than six million customers.
“We feel this is the most robust noticing effort in bankruptcy history, including outreach through national publications,” Paul Moreno, a PG&E spokesman, said.
But sometimes the trouble with filing a claim is more a problem with the process.
Rosemary Peterson had traveled from Magalia for the food giveaway at Paradise Alliance Church when she saw the table with the information about filing a claim.
Ms. Peterson, 88, had tried to submit a claim online but struggled to complete it on her own. Although her home survived the Camp Fire, smoke damage required some restoration. The trees in her yard have died. And her friends and neighbors have scattered.
“There’s nothing in front of me but dead trees,” Ms. Peterson said.
Before her recent visit to the church, Ms. Peterson was about to give up on ever submitting a claim.
But she was greeted not only by the staff members celebrating Christmas with meals for those in need, but also by people wearing shirts commemorating last year’s disaster with messages like “We Stand Together.”
“I wouldn’t have done it had I not been here,” Ms. Peterson said. “I said, I’m going to need help with it. I started to work on it on the internet, but I wasn’t able to do it.”
The drive at the church on this day added her and one other victim to the claim applicants. Perhaps one small victory, but a victory nevertheless.
Dave Bruns, an associate pastor, said the church had been physically spared from the fire and had worked to help the community recover. While the church has long provided food during the Christmas season, this year the congregation doubled the effort to about 300 meals, while also providing information about filing claims. The goal is to help restore the town and its people’s hope.
“We kind of shuffled our focus,” Mr. Bruns said. “This is kind of a rallying point. The real purpose of the meal this year wasn’t just to give people food. It was to invite people to feel normal again.”
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