Faulty power lines ignited the Camp fire on November 8, 2018, but high winds, drought-dried foliage, and an unreliable warning system all caused the inferno to erupt into California’s deadliest wildfire. Eighty-five civilians died, 13,900 houses burned, and nearly all residents of Paradise, a town in California’s Butte County, lost their homes. Between 2018 and 2019, county homelessness increased by 16 percent.
No U.S. wildfire since has reaped such a death toll, but the incineration of entire communities continued this past fall in Oregon, California, and Washington. Given the similarities between those towns and some in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, where homes abut dry forests thick with foliage, experts say the Centennial State could be next. “There’s every reason to believe that in the next five years, a town in Colorado…