1. Then, on a blustery evening in October 2017, the worst wildfires in modern state history ignited. They ripped across Northern California, pushed by the Diablo Winds. The infernos killed 44 people and hospitalized another 192. They incinerated fabled vineyards and the working-class Santa Rosa neighborhood of Coffey Park. People died in swimming pools, in mobile home parks, in their bedrooms and their cars. A fourteen-year-old perished at the end of his family’s driveway, unable to outrun the flames. PG&E was held responsible for seventeen of the twenty-one wildfires—which burned an area eight times the size of San Francisco—though the company escaped blame for the worst of the bunch.
Paradise: One Town's Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire
