Fire Weather: On the Front Lines of a Burning World

by John Vaillant

Painfully clear is the fact that there is no way for firefighters to combat these superheated, firebreak-leaping fires—with or without a tornado in their midst. Water has little effect on a high-intensity wildfire, and fire retardant drops are about as effective as firebreaks. Among the structures burned near Redding was a fire station. There was a time not so long ago when a fire like this one, which forced the evacuation of forty thousand residents, destroyed more than fifteen hundred structures, and burned nearly four hundred square miles across two counties, might have been a monstrous anomaly, but now such fires are becoming the norm. Simultaneous with the Carr Fire was the Mendocino Complex Fire, the largest ever recorded in California. As of August 2018, seven of the most destructive wildfires in the state’s already fire-prone history had ignited within the previous twelve months alone.