This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

We are in the middle of wildfire season here in California. There are more than a dozen

currently burning across the state. And so we're dedicating two episodes to this issue.

Last week we explored the work of Jack Cohen. He's a Forest Service scientist who, back

in the 1980s, started to argue that instead of fighting fires, we should focus more energy

on building homes that were better designed to withstand fire. He helped define and popularize

the idea of defensible space, which is the buffer you should create between a building

on your property and the grass trees and other flammable materials that surround it.

This week we're going to spend time in one community in Southern California, which is

frequently threatened by fire and is grappling with what it means to rebuild over and over

again. When Darryl Cagle moved to Monocito, California

as a kid in 1964, it was a quiet town. The kind of place where his single mother who worked

as a schoolteacher could buy a house. Monocito used to be a very normal neighborhood.

Normal people with normal jobs could afford affordable houses there.

Cagle has changed a lot since then. It's now famously home to Roblo and Obra and not

so many single mothers and schoolteachers.

The housing prices are crazy and the demographics of town are just oddly extreme, but it's a lovely

place and it's where I grew up and it's very comforting to be in the place that is so familiar.

Nestled between the mountains and the Pacific, right next to Santa Barbara, Monocito is very

charming and very geographically isolated. I can see why so many celebrities want to

live there.

That's Susie Cagle, the reporter for our story this week and Darryl's daughter.

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