Last year, California experienced its deadliest and most destructive wildfire season. Shingletown, nicknamed Little Paradise, is one of the state's most wildfire-vulnerable communities.
Unless it's Sunday, Kelly Loew is steering her rusty red Jeep down the same mail route in Shingletown, as she has six days a week for the last seven years. But she delivers less mail these days as California's persistent wildfires drive residents away.
According to data from the National Catastrophe Service, wildfires over the past decade have resulted in more than $52 billion in insured losses across the country. Flames have burned nearly 49,000 structures across the U.S. since 2014, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. That's more structures lost than in the previous 14 years combined.
Among her most important possessions: three figurines of angels embracing firefighters. Spencer has six firefighters in her family. Three of them — her son, husband and nephew — spent more than a week battling the Woodbury Fire, which broke out June 8. But while the number of wildfire disaster declarations has grown in the past two decades, only 16.2% of wildfires larger than 100,000 acres have been declared major disasters, which is about 0.002% of all wildfires in the past 20 years."Being human means there's risk of some sort in your life," Loew said."If you're looking for a quiet mountain town with a good community, a good school and great people, this is the place to be. ...
The more than 41,000 burned structures in California is nearly 13 times more than the next state, Texas, which had 3,222 structures burned in the same time span. Shingletown, named after its historic production of wooden shingles, is considered vulnerable because of its average age of 61, its median household income of $42,000 — more than $18,000 less than the national median — and its location in the foothills of the Cascade Range.
California Assemblyman Jim Wood said he's been working to find funding for wildfire prevention since wildfires in 2017 killed 44 people in Northern California, which until last year, were the most destructive in state history. California's building code requires homes in fire-prone regions built after 2008 to have fire resistant roofs and siding, and other safeguards. This year, a similar amendment was passed in Oregon, which had the sixth most wildfires in 2018. Both codes require homeowners to pay for it.
"The Camp Fire is a prime example of what happens when you're dealing with inadequate information in a rapidly developing wildfire," he said."If the SR-7 system had been deployed ... it would have detected the fire and it would have given the people of Paradise about an hour and a half more time to evacuate."
"In the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, Amen. Thank you, Lord, for protecting us, for protecting our homes. Thank you, Lord, for protecting our firefighters; without them our homes would not be safe," Spencer said."There are just no words, but thank God we are home. There's no place like home. Amen."PRESCRIBED POTENTIAL
For the first time since the 1920s, data from the National Interagency Fire Center has recorded the amount of acreage being burned by wildfires increasing. Federal fire suppression costs quadrupled to nearly $18.5 billion from $4.5 billion 20 years ago.
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