A U.S. Forest Service team was deployed for support after the Camp Fire swept through nearby communities including Paradise, Magalia and Concow in Northern California in 2018. (Photo by Tanner Hembree/U.S. Forest Service)
One day in November of 2018 in a canyon at the Sierra Nevada foothills, one steel hook that held up a string of electrical insulators – little white discs that prevent electricity from moving between them – broke. The power line that was attached to the electrical insulators fell onto the nearby transmission tower, creating a continuous electric discharge that was estimated to reach between 5,000 and 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Molten metal fell from the tower onto the brush below, starting a fire at its base.
This was the beginning of what would later be known as the Camp fire, a more than 150,000-acre wildfire that swept through the rural California communities of Butte Creek Canyon, Concow, Magalia, and Paradise. At the time it was the deadliest U.S. wildfire of the 21st century, killing 85 people and destroying nearly 20,000 structures…