Contemporary · North America · Disaster
2018
Camp Fire incinerates Paradise
November 8, 2018
A faulty PG&E transmission line sparked a wildfire that crossed the town of Paradise, California, in four hours flat and burned it to the ground, destroying nearly nineteen thousand structures. Eighty-five people died, many trapped in their cars on clogged evacuation routes. The town never really came back. The age of climate-driven megafires had arrived in middle-class America.