gotten so bad that it wasn t safe to breathe. so my wife and i took me, the asthmatic, my elderly parent, and our kids straight to vegas. not because we wanted to gamble, but because it was close and there were cheap flights. now back then, it seemed like a oneself-in-a-lifetime thing. rescue, what is your emergency? reporter: but ever since, the fires in california have gotten worse. dixie fire. woolsey fire. are more towns burned to the ground, more forests devastated and more refugees. this episode is about californians and fire, because we got to learn how to get along. now if you re thinking that you re safe because you live outside of california, nope. wildfires happen across america, from alaska to florida. and they happen all over the world. wildfires sweeping across australia. cape town. estonia and turkey. all the way to the north pole. and even if they aren t happening near you, the effects are definitely coming to your doorstep. there i
commodity and fire the enemy to be stamped out. then in 1910, wildfires destroyed three million acres across the uswest. so the u.s. forest service made it their policy to put out any fire as soon as it started. as a result, forests became dense and overgrown. there were too many small young trees and dead trees and dry brush accumulated on the floor. add drought and climate change to the mix and you have the perfect kindling for a wildfire. isn t there a part that the wildfires started to do things people hadn t seen them do before? yeah. one thing i noticed is how fast the wildfires move. you can look at it one hour. and then in the next hour, the situation is completely changed. i think we definitely saw that on the caldor fire this last year. the best way to think about this is the fire behavior triangle, weather, fuel,top topography. on that fire we had a red flag warning, which means it s