So they're not coming in here with their big rig at all. But your firefighters are only going to walk in (laughter) there. Right off the bat, it's hard to imagine when people buy a piece of property that you think, like, yeah, you can buy that. SIEGLER: We then plunged down a narrow, steep and winding dirt road that led us toward the rim of a canyon. SIEGLER: Smoke from the Dixie Fire - you know, he took me down a highway lined on both sides by stumps from logged, charred pine trees.ĮFSEAFF: This is not something a fire engine would even entertain going down. And I took a ride with him one morning to learn more about what he's up to.ĮFSEAFF: You can see the smoke has gotten bad as we're driving up the canyon here. I mean, he's the director of Paradise's Parks Department. His name is Dan Efseaff, and he's kind of an understated player up there, not someone you might expect like an elected official or a fire manager pushing for big changes. HERSHIPS: And you met one man in particular who's really trying to think differently and get the community to think differently, even in the middle of this full-blown crisis. And there's a serious push up there to build the town back in a much smarter way. I mean, just look on the horizon and see the Dixie Fire.
There's this sense that the old way of living in the West is not sustainable. For many people, it triggered trauma, even.īut I'd say going back there, it's been interesting to track this sort of evolution of thinking in and around Paradise in the years since that fire, the Camp Fire. When I went back up to the Sierra Nevada just recently to cover more fires, you could see the plume of the Dixie Fire in Northern California from Paradise. And in states like California especially, a lot of people are moving out into higher fire risk areas because they have to. HERSHIPS: And the stakes are especially high right now because millions of Westerners are now living in the path of potential fires. SIEGLER: What's going on in Paradise is grabbing the attention of a lot of people who have been warning for years that this country's wildfire policy is grossly outdated in the era of climate change. So today on the show, we're going to look at what Paradise learned and what we could learn from Paradise. government is on track to spend $2 billion trying to contain these mega fires. And this is THE INDICATOR FROM PLANET MONEY. I'm Sally Herships in for Stacey Vanek Smith Then they have kind of an interesting plan for that land. They're looking to buy people out of some of the highest fire risk parts of town.
HERSHIPS: And Paradise, Calif., is doing something different this season. But the town's parks director sees opportunity.ĭAN EFSEAFF: There have been so many instances of these fires, people know that we have to do something different. SIEGLER: Today, Paradise actually sits right in between two of this country's largest wildfires still burning. I remember it was this devastating fire, and 85 people died. And once again, Northern California is at the center of a wildfire crisis, just like it was almost three years ago when the Camp Fire burned down Paradise. KIRK SIEGLER, BYLINE: Yes, Sally, and this year, the traditional fire season, if you can even call it that anymore, has yet to even peak in much of California. He's been covering Western wildfires for more than a decade. Six million acres of land have burned, which means it's a busy time for Kirk Siegler, one of NPR's correspondents. The West has continued to be hit by all of these droughts.
This year has been another really devastating one for wildfires. (SOUNDBITE OF DROP ELECTRIC SONG, "WAKING UP TO THE FIRE")