Hounded by Wildfires, Californians Rethink Their Willingness to Rebuild
In the aftermath, some people are deciding to just begin new lives elsewhere. The pandemic and longstanding housing problems haven’t made the choices any easier.
By Debra Kamin
Published Jan. 15, 2021Updated Jan. 17, 2021
The day Paradise burned, Aaron Singer was a skeptic. Then he saw the flames in his rearview mirror.
This was November 2018, and the Camp Fire, the most destructive wildfire in California history, was making swift and smoky headway through the Sierra Nevada foothills. It took fewer than four hours to rip through this town of 26,000 residents, reducing schools, businesses, and 11,000 homes into piles of smoldering ash. When Mr. Singer got the evacuation order, he believed it was another false alarm. But he peeled out of his driveway as flames licked his yard, making it out of town with minutes to spare.
FEMA Ranks LA County & Inland Empire Among Riskiest For Natural Disasters | 99 1 KGGI iheart.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from iheart.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he can t see how the current restrictions and recommendations around Thanksgiving would be relaxed by Christmas.
Riverside and San Bernardino Counties weren t far behind L.A. County. They had the third and fourth highest increases in average new daily cases, according to the data, and both counties were also among the top 50 for long distance travel over the holiday week.
Even after adjusting for population differences among counties across the country, Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino Counties remained in the top 11% nationwide for new cases the week after Thanksgiving.