i'm liev schreiber. thanks for watching. good night. [siren blaring] police officer: i need traffic stopped, southbound 10. steve pyne: fire has been on earth as long as plants have been on land. police officer: follow me! follow me! steve pyne: but we get a big shift when a species arrives who can start fire at will. police officer: go, go, go, go! go south! steve pyne: i think humans have been changing the earth for a long time. police officer: come down this way! come down this way! steve pyne: we've lost the ability to understand how fire works and how it can be used to our advantage. police officer: [indistinct] the fire has jumped the road. this is bad. steve pyne: we've mismanaged fire. now we get fires that are really off the scale, shouldn't be here, shouldn't be behaving in this way. and now we're left with these monsters. and it is remaking the world. police officer: (voice breaking) it's all bad up here, brother. it's all bad. oh, my god. [thunder crackling] welcome to violent earth. i'm liev schreiber. scientists say wildfires are more frequent and burning bigger. in the past, a 50,000 or 60,000 acre fire was considered big. these days, firefighters are often dealing with fires well above 100,000 acres. according to government statistics, during the 1990s, an average of 3 million acres a year burned in the united states. since 2000, that number has more than doubled. in 2020 alone, over 10 million acres were consumed. the experts say 85% to 90% of wildfires are caused by human activity. tonight, violent earth takes a look at this roaring force of nature, starting with the mega fire that burned through paradise, california, in 2018. [police radio chatter] kory honea: the camp fire was the deadliest and most destructive fire in california's history. [shouting] john messina: it was almost 200 days since we had received any rainfall in that particular area. the wind was very dry and blowing in gusts of 70 miles an hour. kory honea: the town of paradise at the time of the camp fire was about 26,000 people. alexander maranghides: a town built in the forest. there was a lot of vegetation, topography, wind, drought. all these things contributed to make this event unfold very rapidly. police officer: go double lanes! go double lanes! and very catastrophically. kory honea: the fire was caused by a downed electrical transmission line. camp creek road was the nearest named road to the ignition. and that's why this is the camp fire. tamra fisher: oh, this is horrible. oh, my gosh. oh, my gosh. these poor people. i've lived in paradise since 1979. i prepared for years for this exact moment. i knew fire was-- was bad. i've always respected it. tamra is my little sister. she's raw, and she's funny. this, too, could be you. tamra was not as concerned about the wildfires as i was. and that morning, i got out of there pretty fast. tamra texted me and asked me what was happening. and i said, "get out, t. get out. paradise is going to burn down." but possibly, the cell towers were starting to burn in that area. i don't believe she got my text. tamra fisher: can we please get out of here? larry laczko: tamra had her three dogs in the car with her. tamra fisher: it's 9 o'clock in the morning. larry laczko: she was recording the events on her cell phone. tamra fisher: i'm really scared. and i don't got that much gas! she was stressed that she was not making progress getting away from the fire. tamra fisher: come on! just go! i'm so scared! [honking horn] todd abel: these fires, it's very, very intense heat. ignite a tree without flame touching it. all at once, the tree lights up sort of like a roman candle. paul hessburg: and when a wildfire is really moving fast, it can burn five to 10 football fields in a second. it's millions of hot embers that can find so many places to ignite a fire. sometimes the winds are so strong that they are tossed up to five miles. brad elder: the drier it is outside, the probability of that ember is going to stay lit and the fuel that it lands in is approaching 100%. [police radio chatter] paul hessburg: paradise, california, burned from an ember attack from a plume miles away from paradise. kory honea: this is, like, 9 o'clock in the morning, and it's pitch black. given the smoke, it almost appeared as though it was the middle of the night and it was snowing. ash and embers began to rain down. john messina: the fire was moving at a football field per second. and the way it did that, of course, was by jumping ahead and starting these fires. they would immediately take hold and rapidly grow into a 100-acre, 200-acre spot fire. that was happening all through town. alexander maranghides: that resulted in the town starting to burn all at once. 30,000 people were trying to be evacuated while being overran by fire. police officer: go forward and turn around. turn around and go north. turn around and go north. [bleep] this is bad. larry laczko: a firefighter told tamra to follow him down pearson road. cindy christensen: tamra was behind them. but the traffic stopped. tamra fisher: no! [honking horn] larry laczko: everything around her was burning. tamra fisher: look at that. cars on the side burning. and nobody was moving. tamra fisher: go! it's so hot. todd abel: these fires, they can be well over 2,000 degrees. they melt metal. they melt cars. and you can hear her dogs panting in the back. [dogs whimpering] tamra fisher: ugh! and her despair. tamra fisher: what did i do? come on! paul hessburg: the increase in wildfires in the current 21st century is exponential. california is seeing its worst year ever for wildfires. canada in general right now for this fire season. 33.8 million acres have already burned. brad elder: and we generally think of fire as bad because most wildfires are dangerous. mark finney: but it's very important to try to understand really the essential role that fire has in our ecosystems and the beneficial role. steve pyne: fire is not some kind of alien visitation on the landscape. fire has been on earth as long as plants have been on land. we can go back 420 million years and find fossil charcoal. these landscapes have, in a sense, co-evolved with fire. kristen honig: fires are good for the planet. they have lots of roles in ecosystem health. brad elder: there's so many different plants and animals that respond positively to fires. paul hessburg: the varied habitats come from the byproducts of a wildfire. the forests of western north america, including the western united states, need fire. they evolved with fire. what is new is the frequency of very large fires is increasing. steve pyne: it kills people, threatens properties and towns. they're essentially uncontrollable at scale. paul hessburg: wildfires are burning at the rate of 7 to 10 million acres of the us every year. this is unprecedented. it's getting worse. paul hessburg: we expect double to triple the amount of area burned between now and 2050. well, how did that happen? [music playing] [siren blaring, police radio chatter] karen davis: i was a registered nurse at feather river hospital in paradise. we received a code black-- get patients out now. and the flames were unbelievable that came up the canyon. my best friend, nichole, was also a nurse at feather river hospital. we worked together. karen davis: ambulances were not able to get to us. patients had to be put in employee vehicles. dispatcher: 10-4, chief, go ahead. karen davis: after we got all the patients in vehicles, nichole and i left following each other. steve pyne: 1910 was really the founding year for the american way of firefighting. reporter: the big blowup. a wild surging firestorm started near elk city, idaho. paul hessburg: the 1910 big burn. it burned 3 million acres across three states, killed 87 people, mostly firefighters. and our awareness and our whole consciousness about fire pivoted in that moment. reporter: this is a picture of tragedy, a tragedy that happens year after year in our great american forest areas-- fire. fire became public enemy number one. and wildfires were to be put out at all cost. steve pyne: and at that point, we almost militarized firefighting. kyle dickman: we were really good at it. firefighters could put out 99% of fires before they grew bigger than an acre. paul hessburg: and from about 1935 to about 1985, you see not much fire burning. and it made our fire suppression look great. steve pyne: and that was a very poor judgment. well, they completely misjudged the character of the overall fire scene. paul hessburg: what's happened since the exclusion of fire is forests have gotten denser. the forests of today look nothing like they did in the 1930s. there are 10 times even more trees than that on the landscape of the historical condition. and they will burn bigger and they'll burn hotter than they burned historically. and what we didn't know in those days and we've learned later through research is, fire is medicine on the landscape, and it's how we can live safely. and here's why that's so critical. it was the frequency of the small- and medium-sized fires that blocked the flow of very large fires. you might burn out a patch in a forest, but the bulk of the force is still standing there. mark finney: fires that just burn underneath the trees, maybe some grass, maybe some downed logs. paul hessburg: so there's power in the patchwork to regulate how big and how severe the fires got. so fires would be rarely very large. so after a century and a half without fire, fuels have built up over many large areas to powder keg conditions. but the worst part of it is, we're actually building homes in the middle of this mess. and so when we get a large fire, houses and forests literally go up in smoke. and as the climate continues to turn up the heat and dry out the landscape, what we see after '85 is that area burned increases exponentially. and it continues to increase today. fires like paradise, the camp fire. alexander maranghides: the town of paradise had not seen any fire history in the past 100-plus years. paul hessburg: they're setting new records for area burned and structures that are burned. and it's because the fires are literally uncontrollable. police officer: i copy that. [honking horn] tamra fisher: i'm scared! cindy christensen: tamra was beating on her horn, screaming to go, go, go, go. tamra fisher: come on! cindy christensen: nothing was moving. larry laczko: tamra was driving a yellow volkswagen beetle. somebody shot a video from behind her showing her out of her volkswagen. that firestorm came roaring through. it was unreal. her car was on fire. she was screaming for help. tamra fisher: help! cindy christensen: tamra was on pearson road. alexander maranghides: pearson is one of the top five worst situations in all of camp fire. the fire overtakes evacuating, gridlocked traffic. everything is on fire all at once. vehicles start catching on fire. 40 abandoned vehicles in that 6/10 of a mile. and this created a very, very dangerous situation. nichole's car was trapped with me right on pearson road. nichole jolly: that tree could come down on me at any moment. this is ridiculous. and i'm stuck. [bleep] tamra fisher: oh, my god. it's everywhere. in tamra's video, you could see my white truck, and you can see nichole's silver sedan. people just sitting there. nothing was moving. tamra fisher: this is a [bleep] nightmare. just come on! oh, my god. karen davis: all of a sudden, i could feel my truck drop, which meant my tires were burning. and right in the middle of that, i heard a knock on the window. nichole got out of her car because her car had caught on fire. she tried to open the door, but the handles were gone from the outside. they had melted away. so she ran off. i had no idea where she was. [music playing] a slow network is no network for business. that's why more choose comcast business. and now, we're introducing ultimate speed for business —our fastest plans yet. we're up to 12 times faster than verizon, at&t, and t-mobile. and existing customers could even get up to triple the speeds... at no additional cost. it's ultimate speed for ultimate business. don't miss out on our fastest speed plans yet! switch to comcast business and get started for $49.99 a month. plus, ask how to get up to an $800 prepaid card. call today! s greater than 100,000 acres, we term it a "mega fire." some of the biggest fires are a million acres or more. big, hot fires create their own weather. suddenly, this really white cloud start developing. it was being made by the moisture being driven off by the fire down below. and in the most extreme cases, they have lightning, and they have rain. they have very strong downdrafts that can create very, very strong winds right down at the surface. paul hessburg: sometimes wildfires are so loud, associated with the wind and weather that the fire is creating, it sounds like a 747 flying overhead. tornadoes, they call them "firenadoes," will happen as a consequence of these phenomenal surface wind speeds. woman: oh, my-- they move incredibly fast when they get up and go. and they're really quite horrific. mark finney: wildfires ignite from lots of different sources. steve pyne: before humans were around, this was almost always lightning. volcanic activity can start fires. that's a natural ignition, we often call it. steve pyne: humans probably account for 90% of the ignition in the united states and probably around the world. reporter: investigators say a wildfire near yosemite national park was started by an unattended campfire. reporter: power lines were blamed for starting 10 fires this year. violent and explosive wildfires in hawaii fueled by strong winds from a hurricane 800 miles away. reporter: maui locals have never seen anything like the firestorm that obliterated lahaina. winds of up to 80 miles an hour. erin burnett: tee dang was on vacation with her family. the flames so dangerously close that they were forced to jump into the ocean to save themselves. tee dang: it was just like a hot oven fire flaming, blowing at us. and then we started just huddling in and trying to keep our family tight so we won't get burned from the fire and then get washed away from the water. reporter: the lahaina fire is now the deadliest fire in the us in more than a century. reporter: this will rank as one of the worst disasters in american history. it's as bad as paradise, california, the deadliest fire from a few years back. larry laczko: that morning, when i turned on pearson road, i hit gridlock. we were just inching along when i came upon tamra and her burning vw beetle on the side of the road. she just opened her door. i heard tamra say, "i need help putting out this fire." i told her, "you need to get into my truck." but she seemed like she wanted to stay with the car. i know she had some treasured belongings. but she had to get away from that. tamra fisher: i'm sorry, lucky. i'm crying. karen davis: nichole got out of her car because her car was on fire. she knocked on my window. and she tried to open the door, but couldn't. so she ran off. i was dazed from the smoke. and i didn't know where she went. everybody was in a panic, just trying to survive. larry laczko: i did witness people running to a cal fire fire engine. we couldn't believe that they were outside. the temperature inside the engine at that point was probably around 150, 160 degrees. at some point, the outside of the engine probably took temperatures of 600 degrees. we started pulling people into the engine, as many as we could. but we just didn't have any more room. larry laczko: we were still trying to inch along. tamra fisher: [indistinct speech] [crying] and suddenly, out of the darkness came the headlights of a bulldozer driven by a cal fire hero, pushing burning vehicles off the side of the road beside us. john jessen: joe kennedy, he was able to get those cars out of our way and be able to open up that road and give us a means of escape. alexander maranghides: the dozer comes in, helps clear the area, and enables the first responders to escort the convoy out of harm's way. karen davis: that eventually saved our lives. i did wonder what happened to nichole. i remember it was so hot, my eyes and my throat were burning. i ran up the road. and i'm closing my eyes because you can't see anything. and i touched the back of this fire engine. the firefighters looked at me, and they were like, oh my gosh. karen davis: and i later learned nichole was one of the people that ran into the fire engine. nichole jolly: the firefighters absolutely saved our lives. i waited all day for tamra. i didn't hear anything. i was so scared. if i wouldn't have had my dogs, i probably would have ran on foot. having larry open the truck door and tell me to get in and then said, "bring the dogs," it was like a knight in shining armor. i got a text from somebody i didn't know, this gentleman, larry. i found out that he had saved tamra. i feel that i was in the wrong place at the right time. tamra fisher: oh, my god. karen davis: and when we finally did get through, it was like an apocalypse. tamra fisher: oh, my gosh. it's like you're seeing this destruction that you only see in, like, movies. it's gone. larry laczko: it's gone. tamra fisher: it's gone. look, that house is gone. larry laczko: yep. tamra fisher: and that house is gone. and to see that devastation, it was surreal. yeah, my sister's just right up here. it's all gone. cindy christensen: our neighborhood, our house, there was nothing left. nothing. it was decimated. we lost everything, except for the clothes on our backs. nichole holly: the flames engulfed the hospital, and the roof collapsed. kory honea: it consumed 18,000 structures. 15,000 of those structures were homes, places where people lived. karen davis: and i learned. the next road up from where we were trapped, that's where five people died trying to run from the flames. 85 people lost their lives. there's nowhere you can go in butte county where you don't run into somebody who was burned out of their home or knew somebody who perished in the fire. a slow network is no network for business. that's why more choose comcast business. and now we're introducing ultimate speed for business, our fastest plans yet. we're up to 12 times faster than verizon, at&t, and t-mobile. and existing customers could even get up to triple the speeds at no additional cost. from the company with 99.9% network reliability and advanced cyber security, it's ultimate speed for ultimate business. and it's all from comcast business. todd abel: all over the western united states, these fires are more intense. wildland firefighters are a big part of trying to mitigate these natural disasters. hotshots are sort of a breed of their own. kyle dickman: hotshot firefighters are crews of 20 people, men and women. desiree steed: they fight fire from the frontlines. kyle dickman: their job is to go anywhere in the country where there's a bad fire. and they'll spend as long as two weeks or three weeks on a single fire. i'm a former granite mountain hotshot. it's really not a job. it's a lifestyle and career. kyle dickman: the granite mountain hotshots were a hotshot crew. came from the city of prescott, arizona. eric marsh was the superintendent of the granite mountain hotshots. a very meticulous man, very intelligent. and then there was jesse steed. desiree steed: jesse was the captain. so he was second in command. prior to that, he was also in the marine corps. he was tough, 6' 4" and 220 pounds. always put his family first, his kids first. brendan mcdonough: jesse was a mentor, and he was a dad that i so desperately wanted to be like. desiree steed: he could handle all kinds of excruciating, backbreaking labor and work and actually enjoyed it. [music playing] todd abel: in arizona, june is usually kind of that month where everybody's hair on the back