Even those of us who live far away from Southern California have struggled to get our heads around the scale of the destruction and human suffering caused by this latest round of fires.

Did you see the video that was either a fire whirl or a full-blown fire tornado racing

across a hillside in Pacific Palisades?

Scientists who once thought this phenomenon was vanishingly rare are realizing it's happening

more and more, given the conditions we have created on this rapidly warming planet.

From KERA in Dallas, this is Think. I'm Chris Boyd.

Recent years have seen out-of-control blazes in Australia and Texas,

and also in places where they might once have seemed impossible.

The Amazon rainforest, the coast of Maui, parts of Canada just a few hours

south of the Arctic Circle. The fires that tore through Fort McMurray, Alberta, were the focus

of journalist John Valiant's book, Fire Weather, on the front lines of a burning world. It was nominated

for a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize. And in addition to sharing the facts of how one small city found itself in unprecedented danger,

the book also tells a wider story of why so many communities are now in the potential path of devastating conflagrations that once sparked are exceedingly difficult to bring under control.

John, welcome to think. Hi, Chris. So glad to bring under control. John, welcome to think.

Hi, Chris.

So glad to be with you.

People fortunate enough to have no direct experience with these kinds of fires might be surprised at how long it has taken to bring the California fires under control, let alone get them extinguished entirely.

The fires you document in your book burned and

smoldered and burned again for more than a year, right?

That's true. And fire is a really durable entity, and it wants to propagate and continue

burning, continue oxidizing just about as badly as we do. And so in its own way,

it fights for its life and will persist under all conditions as long as possible.

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