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 Kegel moved to Monocito California as a kid in 1964, it was a quiet town town the kind of place where his single mother who worked as a

school teacher could buy a house.

Manicito used to be a very normal neighborhood.

Normal people with normal jobs

could afford affordable houses there.

Monocido has changed a lot since then.

It's now famously home to Rob Lowe and Oprah and not so many single mothers and school teachers.

The housing prices have gone 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,

Montecito is very charming and very geographically isolated.

I can see why so many celebrities want to live there.

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