A Deadly Tinderbox

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 15 September 2020

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

“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. The scale of the wildfires is dizzying — millions of acres have burned, 30 different blazes are raging and thousands of people have been displaced. Dry conditions, exacerbated by climate change and combined with a windstorm, created the deadly tinderbox. 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. Today, we hear from people living in the fire’s path who told Jack about the toll the flames had exacted. Guest: Jack Healy, a national correspondent for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily Background reading:“The long-term recovery is going to last years,” an emergency management director said as the fires left a humanitarian disaster in their wake.The fearmongering and false rumors that accompanied a tumultuous summer of protests in Oregon have become a volatile complication in the disaster.

Transcript

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0:19.4	of expertise.
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0:26.0	From the New York Times, I'm Megan Tooe.
0:33.0	This is The Daily.
0:36.0	Today, as wildfires continue to rip through parts of the West, Oregon is seeing unprecedented
0:48.7	destruction.
0:58.8	It's Tuesday, September 15.
1:05.3	So Jack, tell us what's been happening in Oregon.
1:09.0	Unrelenting fires continuing to rage throughout Oregon.
1:12.8	Well a million acres of Oregon have burned in recent weeks.
1:19.1	The flames comes that toxic smoke that's blanketed the West Coast smothering several major
1:24.0	cities.
1:25.0	As incredibly dry conditions exacerbated by the effects of climate change combined with
1:32.8	a really historic and devastating wind storm to create some of the worst fire conditions
1:39.4	that people here have seen in years, if not generations.
1:43.2	Nearly three dozen wildfires so widespread they can be seen from space.
1:48.0	There are 30 different fires burning in Oregon.
	...

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