As wildfires rage, California frets over a future of greater perils and higher costs

REDDING, Calif. — The wildfire here that has burned with speed and efficiency through neighborhoods, jumped the wide Sacramento River and killed a half-dozen residents and firefighters, has turned yet another place into a harbinger of what the future holds for this state.

The neighborhoods along the Trinity Highway were tucked among Douglas firs, oaks and eucalyptus, among the nearly 2 million homes statewide that — after years of permissive development in California — sit amid lovely and hazardous tinder.

Now some of them are ashes, only brick chimneys rising from charred foundations. The Carr Fire has burned more than 1,000 houses to the ground.

Read the story by Scott Wilson from The Washington Post - “As wildfires rage, California frets over a future of greater perils and higher costs.”