A Deadly Tinderbox
 

“The entire state is burning.” That was the refrain Jack Healy, our national correspondent, kept hearing when he arrived in the fire zone in Oregon.

The scale of the wildfires is dizzying — millions of acres have burned, 30 different blazes are raging and thousands of people have been displaced.

Dry conditions, exacerbated by climate change and combined with a windstorm, created the deadly tinderbox.

The disaster has proved a fertile ground for misinformation: Widely discredited rumors spread on social media claiming that antifa activists were setting fires and looting.

Today, we hear from people living in the fire’s path who told Jack about the toll the flames had exacted.

Guest: Jack Healy, a national correspondent for The New York Times.

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily

Background reading:

• “The long-term recovery is going to last years,” an emergency management director said as the fires left a humanitarian disaster in their wake.
• The fearmongering and false rumors that accompanied a tumultuous summer of protests in Oregon have become a volatile complication in the disaster.

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