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“Natural” Disasters
“Natural” Disasters
“Natural” Disasters
As millions of Americans struggle to recover from this year's devastating hurricanes, we offer up this collection of stories about previous generations' ways of dealing with meteorological calamity.
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Hurricanes
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Fire
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“Natural” Disasters
Fire
Fire
The Case for Letting Malibu Burn
Many of California’s native ecosystems evolved to burn. But modern fire suppression creates fuel for catastrophic fires. Is it time for a change?
by
Mike Davis
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The Wildfire That Burned Yellowstone and set off a Media Firestorm
30 years ago, it was a huge fire in Yellowstone National Park that stoked media attention and political controversy.
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Retro Report
U.S. Wildfire Causes 1980-2016
Lighting, trash burning, powerlines, playing with matches – how do they rank as causes of wildfire?
by
Jill Hubley
Southern California’s Uncanny, Inevitable Yuletide Fires
Who or what is causing these outbreaks? There are two schools of thought.
by
Mike Davis
California Burns
A meditation from 2007 on the connection between wildfire destruction and suburbanization in California.
by
Mike Davis
In Maui, Echoes of the Deadliest U.S. Wildfire: The 1871 Peshtigo Blaze
The Peshtigo fire ran through 17 towns and killed more than 1,000. It was worsened by a dry season and extreme winds — not dissimilar to what happened in Maui.
by
Kelsey Ables
Why America's Deadliest Wildfire Was Largely Forgotten
In 1871, the Wisconsin town Peshtigo burned to the ground, killing up to 2,500. But due to another event at the time, many have never heard about the disaster.
by
Erin Blakemore
California Wildfires Have Been Fought by Prisoners Since World War II
The war had turned forestry work into a form of civil defense, and prisoners a new army on the home front.
by
Volker Janssen
California Burning
Wildfires in the American West are becoming ever more prevalent and destructive. How did we get to this point?
by
William Finnegan
Eyewitness Accounts of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake
The heart of this book is the sharp and disjointed accounts of survivors, their experience not yet shorn of its surprise.
by
Sasha Archibald
‘A Deranged Pyroscape’: How Fires Across the World Have Grown Weirder
Fewer fires are burning worldwide than at any time since antiquity. But in banishing fire from sight, we have made its dangers stranger and less predictable.
by
Daniel Immerwahr
What Yosemite’s Fire History Says About Life in the Pyrocene
Fire is a planetary feature, not a biotic bug. What can we learn from Yosemite’s experiment to restore natural fire?
by
Stephen Pyne
A Note from the Fireline
Climate change and the colonial legacy of fire suppression.
by
Jordan Thomas
Defensible Space
“Megafires” are now a staple of life in the Pacific Northwest, but how we talk about them illustrates the tension at the heart of the western myth itself.
by
Jessie Kindig
The Brutal Legacy of the Longleaf Pine
The carefully-tended longleaf pine forests of North America were plundered by European colonizers. They're still recovering.
by
Lacy M. Johnson
Historic Fire Lookout Towers Are Burning Down in Today’s Megafires
One of the country’s oldest fire lookouts was destroyed last year in the largest wildfire in California’s history. What else is being lost?
by
Hannah Kingsley-Ma
Looking To History To Combat Wildfires
After decades of modern fire prevention, many forests have become dangerous tinder-boxes.
by
Grace Hood
Flood
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Policy
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Aftermath
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