In other news

November 12, 2020

My World’s on Fire is a free newsletter about disasters from journalist Colleen Hagerty. My goal is to help you feel a bit more at ease about our unpredictable world by equipping you with in-depth reporting and insights. I can only do that with your continued support, so please subscribe and share!

How’s everyone doing? Are you drinking water, getting enough sleep, and eating healthy?

Yeah, me either.

What I have been doing is spending entirely too much time online, and today’s newsletter is the proof. Understanding that many of us spent much of the past week like this, I wanted to highlight some of the other important news you might have missed. Read on to learn about the recovery from California’s deadliest wildfire in modern history, a key milestone in this hurricane season, and my latest, which looks at community activism in response to disasters.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on these pieces and what you’ve been reading/watching/listening to these past few weeks. Leave a comment here, and I might include it in the next links newsletters.

The Camp Fire, two years later

This past Sunday, November 8th marked the two year anniversary of the Camp Fire. It remains the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in modern California history, killing at least 85 people and destroying more than 18,000 buildings.

I’ve been following the recovery in Butte County from a few different angles throughout that time, including an in-depth feature last year, a deep-dive into the role Facebook groups have played, and a report on how the pandemic is affecting one new business in the hard-hit town of Paradise.

Despite COVID-19 closures and concerns, impacted areas have made some significant steps forward this year. More than 400 people built new homes in Paradise, a notable increase from only 12 the previous year. Eligible Camp Fire survivors are also set to begin receiving payouts from PG&E’s multi-billion dollar settlement fund for fires caused by its equipment. And on Monday, Paradise received a nearly $2 million infrastructure grant from the federal government.

But the county has also felt the effects of this year’s record-breaking wildfires, at times dealing with power shutoffs and evacuation warnings (you might remember reading about it in this edition). The San Francisco Chronicle described residents as “soul tired” – and they still have a long road ahead.

If you’re interested in learning more, I had a chance to check out an early screening of director Ron Howard’s “Rebuilding Paradise,” and I definitely suggest you give it a watch. It covers everything from reopening schools to resiliency planning, and it really conveys the complex emotions and choices the rebuilding process requires.

And – in the only election-related note I’m including in today’s newsletter – the Sacramento Bee did a super interesting breakdown of how Butte County is actually “California’s most evenly divided county” when it comes to politics. After voting for Trump in 2016, the county went blue for Biden this year, though it also voted in more conservative local legislators. The article gets more into the question of how fires and Trump’s responses might or might not have impacted these results.

Also on my radar

  • 📚 How CA communities are coming together around ‘good fire’ Here’s what we know: California needs to burn, and it will burn, whether we want it to or not. So, for some residents, one solution is to set those fires themselves – and they’re asking their neighbors to help. I wrote about the growing trend of “prescribed burn associations” in the state, which draw on Indigenous fire practices to address the very modern problem the state’s suppression policies helped created. (SIERRA Magazine)

  • 📚 Looking to the future in Lake CharlesA lovely profile of Lake Charles, LA resident Kathryn Shea Duncan, who you might remember from this edition on the aftermath of Hurricane Laura. (New York Times)

  • 📚 Another record brokenWith the formation of Tropical Storm Theta this week, 2020 broke the record set in 2005 for the most active hurricane season – 29 named storms so far. That’s not to be confused with Tropical Storm Eta, which has been causing flooding in Florida this week. The storm system also cut a devastating path through Central America, where it made landfall as a hurricane and killed more than 100 people. Thesetweets show the widespread devastation the storm caused in Honduras. (The Verge/Washington Post/Weather.com/Twitter)

As always…

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Now, here’s a little something for reading to the end.

Colleen