BERRY CREEK, Calif. — It’s been five years since a sudden shift in the wind brought the North Complex fire roaring up a remote canyon into the pines of Berry Creek, where it incinerated almost all of the more than 1,500 houses in the area and killed 16 people.

But to many of the hundreds of people who remain in the mountain hamlet in Butte County, the blaze that burned through their homes and their lives often feels as if it might have happened five weeks ago instead of five years.

A Times analysis has found that only about 5% of the homes that were burned have been rebuilt, the lowest percentage of major fires in the state over the last eight years by a gigantic margin. Hundreds of residents left, never to return. Some concluded it was foolhardy to even consider rebuilding in such a fir

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