As the West Coast Burns, Communities Unravel With Each Death

With thick smoke blanketing large parts of Washington, Oregon and California and tens of thousands of people evacuated, the fires have been the worst in decades, exacerbated by climate change. By Saturday, fires in California had burned 26 times more territory than at the same time last year.

Across the West this weekend, law enforcement authorities were scouring incinerated communities for missing persons. An emergency management official in Oregon said Friday that the state was bracing for a “mass fatality incident.”

At least 17 people have died in the fires, with dozens more missing and peak fire season only beginning in many parts of the West.

Among those who have died was a 1-year-old boy, Uriel, killed when his parents became trapped by fire while visiting their property in Okanogan, Wash. They were rescued by the side of a river with serious burns after attempting to escape with the baby in a truck. A 77-year-old woman died when flames overtook her home and her car in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

Although fires in previous years have proved more deadly — a firestorm in 2018 that decimated the town of Paradise in California killed more than 80 people in a single night — the numbers obscure the trauma that each death brings to the small communities where wildfires have caused such terror.