A Deadly Tinderbox

<p>“The entire state is burning.” That was the refrain Jack Healy, our national correspondent, kept hearing when he arrived in the fire zone in Oregon.</p><p>The scale of the wildfires is dizzying — millions of acres have burned, 30 different blazes are raging and thousands of people have been displaced.</p><p>Dry conditions, exacerbated by climate change and combined with a windstorm, created the deadly tinderbox.</p><p>The disaster has proved a fertile ground for misinformation: Widely discredited rumors spread on social media claiming that antifa activists were setting fires and looting.</p><p>Today, we hear from people living in the fire’s path who told Jack about the toll the flames had exacted.</p><p>Guest: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/by/jack-healy" target="_blank">Jack Healy</a>, a national correspondent for The New York Times. </p><p>For more information on today’s episode, visit <a href="http://nytimes.com/thedaily?smid=pc-thedaily" target="_blank">nytimes.com/thedaily </a></p><p>Background reading:</p><ul><li>“The long-term recovery is going to last years,” an emergency management director said as the fires left<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/11/us/fires-oregon-california-washington.html" target="_blank"> a humanitarian disaster</a> in their wake.</li><li>The fearmongering and false rumors that accompanied a tumultuous summer of protests in Oregon have become<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/11/us/fires-oregon-antifa-rumors.html" target="_blank"> a volatile complication in the disaster</a>.</li></ul>