In a state that averages more than 7,500 wildfires a year some California homeowners keep helmets and fire hoses handy.
However, the Los Angeles fires demonstrate a new reality: Wildfires in the state are growing larger and more ferocious and burning into suburbs and cities more often, experts told USA TODAY.
“We really are dealing with a new wildfire paradigm,” said Faith Kearns, a water and wildfire expert with the Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University.
People are used to thinking of fire in terms of either structure fires or wildfires in rural areas, but in recent decades, the lines have blurred. More intense wildfires burn into neighborhoods where flames quickly spread from cars and homes, Kearns said. "That becomes “a very, very different kind of fire to fight, and also a very difficult kind of fire to fight.”
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Quick-moving brush fires burned through a large swath of land on New York’s Long Island on...
