‘We got really lucky’: Why California escaped another destructive fire season in 2022
‘We got really lucky’: Why California escaped another destructive fire season in 2022
By Emily Green, California Public Radio. This story is part of a series by California Public Radio that looks at the challenges facing the Golden State.
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In September 2018, the last time California had a late summer or fall blaze, a home burned in the town of Paradise, in San Bernardino County’s Antelope Valley.
The fire scorched more than 1,500 acres in the area, rippling across the mountainside, destroying hundreds of homes, including a couple in a nearby canyon who died trying to retrieve their children’s bodies.
A week after the fire, the county paid a $2 million settlement to victims, which will help pay for homes to be built.
It brought to mind a famous quote from the civil rights icon Martin Luther King: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
The phrase — “the arc of the moral universe” — has been popularized by an article in the popular media, but it first made its way into the public consciousness through the story of a New Orleans teenager and the school segregation experienced by her family.
The arc is a metaphor used to describe the trajectory of a moral movement, and in the case of civil rights, the civil rights movement itself has become an example of a moral arc.
For the past year, the arc of the California fire season has taken the shape of a curve that would have made King proud.
The last time California had a late summer or fall blaze, a home burned in the town of Paradise, in San Bernardino County’s Antelope Valley. The fire scorched more than 1,500 acres in the area, rippling across the mountainside, destroying hundreds of homes, including a couple in a nearby canyon who died trying to retrieve their children’