A new kind of urban firestorm

Rising temperatures and shifting seasons have increased the risk of wildfires that burn faster and are harder to contain. When those blazes jump into nearby communities, they are fueled not by forests but by buildings — moving from home to home, from garage to business to school, until they consume even areas far away from the wilderness.

“It’s a new beast,” said John Abatzoglou, a climatologist at the University of California at Merced. “Or rather, it’s a beast that existed and we thought we had controlled.”