How an Oregon Wildfire Became One of the Most Destructive | Visual Investigations

Hello all, this is Christoph from The New York Times. For our latest video, we took a closer look at one specific wildfire on the West Coast of the United States. The Almeda Drive Fire in southern Oregon stands out among the many fires because of the high number of homes and businesses it destroyed: More than 2,300 homes burned down in less than 24 hours on Sept. 8. I wanted to find out why this fire, which burned a smaller area compared to some of the other wildfires, turned into one of the most destructive ones. I used satellite images, social media posts, first responder radio traffic and text messages shared with me to reconstruct what happened.

“The fire moves so quickly that some residents who left their homes for work aren’t able to return.” Breaks my heart to think of all the people who had pets at home... 😢 not to mention prized personal belongings, entire livelihoods, etc. all destroyed so quickly. Devastating.

My house burned down earlier this year in February. Almost everything we owned was destroyed. Furniture, keepsakes, souvenirs from countless trips, priceless family and baby photos, all gone. I can not imagine what each of these families are going through. My heart goes out to them.

This fire initially broke out just north of my home. It's so surreal how many people I know lost their homes while mine remained

I lost my home in that fire.

My heart goes out to all of these people. I am a survivor of the Paradise Camp Fire that took out our entire town of 15000 homes and businesses. Our entire town of 22, 000 people ecsaping Paradise through flame filled streets and roads. Many tragically died a terrifying death. . It has been 2 years now and we are still waiting for the nightmare to end. The battle with the Insurance Companies and the Electric Company that caused the fire has been dragging on since November 2018. Many of us forced to live in Limbo until PG &E and the Insurance Companies finally compensate the losses. My prayers go out to all of you.

I’m there right now and the whole town is a grey pile of rubble

Should have millions of views. Nope, I am sitting here on day 3 of the upload and YouTube has merely shown independent journalism to 77k people, when this is the kind of content that America needs in rough times. I salute you The New York Times

Whomever started this fire is never gonna come forward now. Even if it was an accident.

So devastating.

I would hate to be the person that the investigation finds to be responsible for this fire...😬

Prayers sent over there much love from New York

Man-made fire... Well, It should be considered as a crime

Addicted to NYT Visual Investigations - thank you for the hard work, the insight is truly stunning.

It’s been 7 months and many of us have not been able to rebuild yet. We lost close to 100 animals, we raised chickens, ducks, geese, and turkeys. My parrots died and a horse. They gave us no evacuation notices. We got a message to stay in our homes 1 hour after our home burned. The poor fire department people were devastated as water ran out and they desperately tried to save lives.

A couple things made this fire a worst case scenario. The first was wind, the second was dryness. The video mentions the wind, but it was a lot worse than it says. The rogue valley has seasonal fall wind storms that will shift from a typical NW flow to an extreme South-East flow, reaching speeds up to 30MPH with gusts up to 45-50MPH. It's very common for these wind storms to uproot trees and cause damage to homes. The Almeda Drive Fire started at the very beginning of a wind storm, making it fast and impossible to keep up with for the whole week the fire burned. On top of wind, there was dryness. Usually there is rain that comes with the fall seasonal winds, but for months there were nothing but hot dry days. Everything was parched. Grass and foliage was baked day after day by unyielding hot weather. All this fuel was a bomb waiting to go off. Months of dry days combined with this starting at the very beginning of a seasonal wind storm made for a worst possible scenario. ANY other time in the summer would have meant more moisture or calmer winds. Even in the summer, the typical valley flow blows at most 20-25MPH from the north west. Instead we got the driest day of the summer with the windiest part of the fall. More perfect conditions for creating absolute devastation could hardly be imagined. With Climate Change, these two things will cross over more often. Please listen to and support the local fire fighters. They saved an unbelievable number of homes under impossible circumstances. We will need them more than ever in the coming years.

i dont think I'll ever forget that day. sleeping waiting to go to work that night, only to have under 90 seconds to get what i could before the power was cut, and the smoke enveloped my home. freaky stuff

Nice reporting on this. I really appreciate the in-depth look.

The irony of the first town being named ‘Ashland’..

This is excellent reporting. Kudos to the reporters.