The Future In Flames

What we saw when California burned

- Justin Worland

UNDER FIRE

A resident flees his home in Thousand Oaks, Calif., on Nov. 9 with only the clothes on his back. Wildfires erupted in Northern and Southern California in early November, forcing an estimated 160,000 to evacuate.

PHOTOGRAPH BY

STUART PALLEY

TOTAL LOSS

Californians watch as the Woolsey Fire approaches their homes on Nov. 9 in Malibu. That fire destroyed some 1,500 structures, while the Camp Fire razed nearly 19,000 in the north of the state.

PHOTOGRAPH BY

STUART PALLEY

TY ZOLLNER, A FIREFIGHTER WITH THE CITY OF Alameda, Calif., knew that the call for help would come soon. On the morning of Nov. 8, he, like other firefighters around the state, was listening to reports about a wildfire that had started near the town of Paradise. It sounded bad. Bulldozers were pushing burning cars off the road so people could flee. Requests for additional engines were pouring in. Soon enough, he was tearing up the freeway in a caravan of five engines, one of more than 5,500 firefighters who would descend on Butte County to combat the historic Camp Fire.

A native of Northern California, Zollner has been facing down wildfires for more than a decade. But he’s never seen destruction like what happened in Paradise, where flames tore through street after street of homes, indiscriminately turning the landmarks residents once navigated by into unrecognizable ash. “To see something like that is breathtaking,” he says.