On December 7, 2017, a fire swept down from Ventura County. It grew big enough to earn its own name: the Thomas fire. Then it grew even bigger, into the largest wildfire in the recorded history of California. In the dead of winter, in a county of less than half a million people, more than a hundred thousand people had to be evacuated. The ash that fell in downtown Santa Barbara was not the light dusting they usually got. It rose above the street curbs. It became dangerous to breathe, and impossible to tell what colors the cars had been. When the county’s emergency response team went looking
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