![]() ![]() The Camp Fire remains the deadliest wildfire in California’s history, killing 85 people and destroying over 18,000 structures. We ran it to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the Camp Fire, which ignited in Butte County on November 8, 2018, and obliterated the town of Paradise, near Chico, near where Love grew up. Two years ago, Longreads writer Tessa Love published a beautiful braided essay on fire, home, and belonging. But, as the writers below know, that place does not exist. ![]() It has made us question where in the West, ultimately, is safe from fires - and the effects of climate change. It forced us to wear N95 masks long before the pandemic. It found its way into cities, to the Pacific coast, to places previously thought as safe. The fall of 2017, then, felt markedly different: from then on, fire was no longer confined to wilderness. ![]() As I’ve gotten older, fire has mostly remained a disaster that has happened somewhere else. Growing up on the San Francisco Peninsula in the ’80s, the image of the Forest Service’s mascot, Smokey Bear, was ubiquitous, but while we were taught that wildfire was a threat, it was a theoretical danger to us. This deadly, unprecedented fire blazed across canyons and hills, jumped the 101 freeway, and cut through the city of Santa Rosa without warning - destroying entire neighborhoods in the night and killing 22 people. But the past several years have felt different here, ever since the Tubbs Fire tore through Sonoma, Napa, and Lake counties in October 2017. My birthday is in mid-August, so I was always ready to tackle the next school year, and was excited because our hottest days, our true summer, had yet to come. As a child in Northern California, fall was my favorite time of year. ![]()
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