{"id":5486,"date":"2022-01-01T17:04:51","date_gmt":"2022-01-01T21:04:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/?p=5486"},"modified":"2024-11-03T21:08:37","modified_gmt":"2024-11-04T04:08:37","slug":"the-only-important-cause-of-the-colorado-fires-is-not-a-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/2022\/01\/the-only-important-cause-of-the-colorado-fires-is-not-a-mystery\/","title":{"rendered":"The only important cause of the Colorado fires is not a mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Imagine if a group of foreign conspirators, by piloting a humming drone armada, dropped incendiary bombs on an American neighborhood. Somewhere between 500 and 1000 homes were destroyed. The smoke plumed over a major city, and flames threatened to stir up the radioactive particles in the soil of a nearby retired nuclear facility. Thousands of people, in a matter of hours, saw their communities burned to rubble.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Minus the drones and shady foreigners, that was what happened on December 30 in Boulder County, where I live. I drove my family the long way home around the smoke, rushing from an aborted vacation to gather some things in case the hurricane-force winds turned the fires northward. We meanwhile checked with friends in the evacuation zones, and some would lose everything. From the air or the ground, the scene looked like what we habitually see from abroad: a burning warzone, a dense cityscape dotted with infernos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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