We Are Not Prepared for Fires Like This

A decade ago, this kind of disaster seemed unthinkably rare. In retrospect, Canada’s 2016 Fort McMurray disaster, which formed the basis of John Vaillant’s book “Fire Weather,” was the beginning of a frightening new era. Then came Santa Rosa, Paradise, Boulder and Lahaina — the deadliest North American fire in more than a century, if one that now hardly stands out in cultural memory against the other scars of urban firestorms. In neighborhoods like these, often far from the wildland-urban interface, it’s almost impossible to clear enough brush to make homes defensible, as the wildfire expert Zeke Lunder noted on Tuesday. The homes provide the fuel, and the fires jump from house to house.