>> willing to lead people in the west bank vote why do you think so many republicans have downplayed this? do you think he's guilty? >> the [siren blaring] police officer: i need traffic stopped, southbound 10. steve pyne: fire has been on earth as long as plants have been on land. fire has been on birth as long as play on land. >> but we got a big shift when a species arrived, who could start fire i think keyword to begin changing the earth for a long time. i'm we've lost the ability to understand how fireball works and how it can be used to our advantage this

is bad we've mismanaged fire. now we get fires that are really off the scale, shouldn't be here, shouldn't be behaving in this way. and now we're left with these monsters and it is remaking the world about up here, brother. it's all bad welcome to violent earth. i'm leah of schreiber scientists say wildfires are more frequent and burning bigger and the past of 50 or 60,000 acre fire was considered big these days firefighters are often dealing with fires well above 100,000 acres according to government statistics during the 1990s an average of 3 million acres a year burned in the united states since 2000.

that number has more than doubled in 2020 alone, over 10 million acres were consumed the experts say 85 to 90% of wildfires are caused by human activity tonight violin earth takes a look at this roaring force of nature starting with mega fire. that burned through paradise, california and 2018 can't fire was the deadliest and most destructive fire in california history who's almost 200 days since we'd receive any rainfall in that particular area. >> the wind was very dry in the blowing in gustavo, 70 miles an hour the town of paradise at the time of the campfire was about 26,000 people town built in the forest. there was a lot

of vegetation typography wind drought all this things contributed to make this and van unfold very rapidly and very good. the strophic lead the fire was caused by a down electrical transmission line. >> camp creek road where's the nearest named road to the ignition and that's why there's just the campfire oh, this is my guy. >> my gosh is poor people i looked in paradise since 1979. >> i prepared for years for this exact moment by new fire was, was bad i've always respected it. camera is my little sister. she's brought in she's funny to cia had been

tambora was not as concerned about the wildfires as i was and that morning, i got out of there pretty fast tambora texted me and asked me what was happening and i said get out, t get out. paradise is going to burn down but possibly the cell towers were starting to burn. in that area i don't believe she got my texts here. >> we timur had her three dogs in the car with her 9:00 in the morning. she was recording the events on her cell phones. >> i'm really scared got done much again she was stressed that she was not making progress getting away from the fire these buyers. it's very,

very intense heat ignite a tree without flame touching it all at once. >> the tree lights up sort of like a roman candle and going to wildfires really moving fast asked, it, can burn five to ten football fields in a second it's millions of hot embers that can find so many places to ignite a fire sometimes the winds are so strong that their cost up to five miles the dryer it is outside the profitability of that inverse is going to stay lit in the fuel that lands in is for approaching 100% paradise california burned from an ember attack, from a clone miles away from paradise this,

is like 9:00 in the morning and it's pitch black given the smoke, it almost appeared as though it was the middle of the night and it was snowing ash and embers began to rain down we're in the middle safely, dan here like that. i'm not a safe anywhere the fire was moving at a football field per second what in the way it did that, of course, was by jumping ahead and starting these fires they would immediately take hold and rapidly grow into it hundred acre, 200 acres spotfire that was happening all through town. >> that resulted in the pow1 starting to burn all at once, 30,000 people were trying to be evacuated while being overran by fire if i were to turn around john ago north this is

bad everywhere will be okay. ms bray so bad paradise is on fire a firefighter told tamarin to follow him down pearson road camera was behind them. that the traffic stops everything around her was burning look at that cars on the side burning and nobody was moving these buyers, they could be well over 2000 degrees they melt metal, they melt cars you get hurt dogs panting in the back in her

despair the increase in wildfires in the current 21st century is exponential. >> california is seen, it's worst year ever for wildfires. >> canada in general right now, for this fire season, 33.8 million acres have already burned we generally think of fires bad because most wildfires are dangerous. but it's very important to try to understand really the essential role that fire has in our ecosystems and the beneficial fire is not some kind of alien visitation on the landscape. fire has been on earth as long those play have been on land we

can go back 420 million years and find false and charcoal these landscapes have in a sense co-evolved with fire. >> fire is it good for the planet? they have lots of roles and ecosystem health so many different plants and animals that respond positively. fires they're very habitats come from the byproducts of a wildfire the forests of western north america, including the western united states need fire. they evolved with fire. what is new is the frequency of very large fires is increasing chose people, friends, proper use and towns they're essentially uncontrollable scale wildfires are burning at the rage seven to 10 million acres of the us every year. this is unprecedented it's getting worse we expect double to triple the amount of area burned between now and 2050

well, how did that happen? >> wednesday a cnn special event. it's time to celebrate freedom progress in the trailblazers who paved the way this, is our festive day for all black americans. we still have a lot of work to do joint cnn's victor blackwell for a native interviews and performance is by john legend. >> fatty smokey robinson. so much more cnn, special event, juneteenth celebrating freedom and legacy. wednesday at ten on cnn i was flying to mexico to eat another travel editor and the arrived wearing the same pair of pants. >> they are the turn it out pants for a more polished than genes, more comfortable than leggings meet the perfect travel uniform at this's a de.com i want a lot of businesses, so my tech and my network need to keep up thank

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friend nicole was also a nurse if feather river hospital, we worked together ambulances were not able to get to patients, had to be put in employee vehicles okay. >> go ahead all patients at feather river had been evacuated. they're working on staff after we got all the patients in vehicles, nicole and i left following each other 1910 was really the founding year for the american way of firefighting. >> they blow up. a wild, surging firestorm started near elk city, idaho the 1910 big burn. it burned 3 million acres across three states, killed 87 people, mostly firefighters and our awareness and our whole consciousness about fire

pivoted in that moment. >> this is a picture of tragedy. tragedy that happens year after year and are great i can forest area fire. fire became public enemy number one. and wildfires were to be put out at all cost and at that point, we almost militarized firefighting really good at it. >> firefighters can put out 99% of fires before they grew bigger than an acre. >> and from about 19:30 five to about 1985, you see not much fire burning in it made our fire suppression look great and that was a very poor judgment. >> well, they completely misjudged the character or the overall fire-sale what's happened since the exclusion of fire is forests have gotten denser. >> the forests of today look nothing like they did in the 19 they're ten times even more trees than that on the

landscape of the historical condition. and they will burn bigger and they'll burn hotter than they'd burned historically. >> and what we didn't know in those days and we've learned later through research is fire is madison on the landscape and it's how we can live safely and here's why that's so critical. >> it was the frequency of the small and medium-sized fires that blocked the flow of very large fires we might burn out a patch and a force, but the bulk of the force is still standing there, fires just burn underneath the tree. maybe some graphs, maybe it's come down logs. >> so there's power in the patchwork deregulate how big and how severe the fires god so fires would be rarely very large is after a century and a half without fire, fuels have built up over many large areas to pater kd conditions but the

worst part of it, as we're actually building homes in the middle of this mass. and so when we get a large fire houses and forest, literally go up in smoke in this the climate continues to turn up, the heat and dry out the landscape, what we see after 85 is that area burned increases exponentially and it continues to increase today. fires like paradise, the camp fire, the town of paradise are not seen any fire history in the past 100 plus years they're setting new records for area burned condensed structures that are burned. and it's because the fires are literally uncontrollable camera was beating on her horn,

screaming to go go go, go nothing was moving tamar was driving a yellow volkswagen beetle somebody shot a video from behind her showing her out of her volkswagen that firestorm came roaring through it was unreal her car was on fire. >> she was screaming for help tambora was on your syndrome pearson one of the. top five worst situations in all of campfire with fire overtakes the been curating gridlocked traffic everything is on fire all at once vehicle start catching on fire 40 abandoned vehicles and that's six tenths of a mile and this created a

very, very dangerous situation. >> the coals car was trapped with me, right. i'm pearson road that tree could come down on me at any moment. >> this ridiculous and start it's everywhere into cameras, video. >> you can see my white truck and you can see nicole's over the dann people just sitting there. nothing was moving nightmare carma all of a sudden, i could feel my truck dropped, which bent my tires were burning and right in the medulla that i heard a knock on the window nicole got out of her car because her car had caught on fire. she tried to open the door but the handles were gone

from the outside. they had melted away. you so she ran off i had no idea where she was the most anticipated moment of this greater than 100,000 acres,

we term it a "mega fire." some of the biggest fires are a million acres or more. big, hot fires create their own weather.

suddenly, this really white cloud start developing. it was being made by the moisture being driven off by the fire down below. and in the most extreme cases, they have lightning, and they have rain. they have very strong downdrafts that can create very, very strong winds right down at the surface. paul hessburg: sometimes wildfires are so loud, associated with the wind and weather that the fire is creating, it sounds like a 747 flying overhead. tornadoes, they call them "firenadoes," will happen as a consequence of these phenomenal surface wind speeds. woman: oh, my-- they move incredibly fast when they get up and go. and they're really quite horrific. mark finney: wildfires ignite from lots of different sources. steve pyne: before humans were around, this was almost always lightning. volcanic activity can start fires.

that's a natural ignition, we often call it. steve pyne: humans probably account for 90% of the ignition in the united states and probably around the world. reporter: investigators say a wildfire near yosemite national park was started by an unattended campfire. reporter: power lines were blamed for starting 10 fires this year. violent and explosive wildfires in hawaii fueled by strong winds from a hurricane 800 miles away. reporter: maui locals have never seen anything like the firestorm that obliterated lahaina. winds of up to 80 miles an hour. erin burnett: tee dang was on vacation with her family. the flames so dangerously close that they were forced to jump into the ocean to save themselves. tee dang: it was just like a hot oven fire flaming, blowing at us. and then we started just huddling in and trying to keep our family tight so we won't get burned from the fire and then get washed away from the water. reporter: the lahaina fire is now the deadliest fire in the us

in more than a century. reporter: this will rank as one of the worst disasters in american history. it's as bad as paradise, california, the deadliest fire from a few years back. larry laczko: that morning, when i turned on pearson road, i hit gridlock. we were just inching along when i came upon tamra and her burning vw beetle on the side of the road. she just opened her door. i heard tamra say, "i need help putting out this fire." i told her, "you need to get into my truck." but she seemed like she wanted to stay with the car. i know she had some treasured belongings. but she had to get away from that. tamra fisher: i'm sorry, lucky. i'm crying. karen davis: nichole got out of her car

because her car was on fire. she knocked on my window. and she tried to open the door, but couldn't. so she ran off. i was dazed from the smoke. and i didn't know where she went. everybody was in a panic, just trying to survive. larry laczko: i did witness people running to a cal fire fire engine. we couldn't believe that they were outside. the temperature inside the engine at that point was probably around 150, 160 degrees. at some point, the outside of the engine probably took temperatures of 600 degrees. we started pulling people into the engine, as many as we could.

but we just didn't have any more room. larry laczko: we were still trying to inch along. tamra fisher: [indistinct speech] [crying] and suddenly, out of the darkness came the headlights of a bulldozer driven by a cal fire hero, pushing burning vehicles off the side of the road beside us. john jessen: joe kennedy, he was able to get those cars out of our way and be able to open up that road and give us a means of escape. alexander maranghides: the dozer comes in, helps clear the area, and enables the first responders to escort the convoy out of harm's way. karen davis: that eventually saved our lives. i did wonder what happened to nichole. i remember it was so hot, my eyes and my throat were burning.

i ran up the road. and i'm closing my eyes because you can't see anything. and i touched the back of this fire engine. the firefighters looked at me, and they were like, oh my gosh. karen davis: and i later learned nichole was one of the people that ran into the fire engine. nichole jolly: the firefighters absolutely saved our lives. i waited all day for tamra. i didn't hear anything. i was so scared. if i wouldn't have had my dogs, i probably would have ran on foot. having larry open the truck door and tell me to get in and then said, "bring the dogs," it was like a knight in shining armor. i got a text from somebody i didn't know, this gentleman, larry. i found out that he had saved tamra. i feel that i was in the wrong place at the right time.

tamra fisher: oh, my god. karen davis: and when we finally did get through, it was like an apocalypse. tamra fisher: oh, my gosh. it's like you're seeing this destruction that you only see in, like, movies. it's gone. larry laczko: it's gone. tamra fisher: it's gone. look, that house is gone. larry laczko: yep. tamra fisher: and that house is gone. and to see that devastation, it was surreal. yeah, my sister's just right up here. it's all gone. cindy christensen: our neighborhood, our house, there was nothing left. nothing. it was decimated. we lost everything, except for the clothes on our backs. nichole holly: the flames engulfed the hospital, and the roof collapsed. kory honea: it consumed 18,000 structures. 15,000 of those structures were homes, places where people lived.

karen davis: and i learned. the next road up from where we were trapped, that's where five people died trying to run from the flames. 85 people lost their lives. there's nowhere you can go in butte county where you don't run into somebody who was burned out of their home or knew somebody who perished in the fire.

todd abel: all over the western united states, these fires are more intense. wildland firefighters are a big part of trying to mitigate these natural disasters. hotshots are sort of a breed of their own. kyle dickman: hotshot firefighters are crews of 20 people, men and women. desiree steed: they fight fire from the frontlines. kyle dickman: their job is to go anywhere in the country where there's a bad fire. and they'll spend as long as two weeks or three weeks on a single fire. i'm a former granite mountain hotshot. it's really not a job. it's a lifestyle and career. kyle dickman: the granite mountain hotshots were a hotshot crew. came from the city of prescott, arizona. eric marsh was the superintendent of the granite mountain hotshots. a very meticulous man, very intelligent. and then there was jesse steed. desiree steed: jesse was the captain.

so he was second in command. prior to that, he was also in the marine corps. he was tough, 6' 4" and 220 pounds. always put his family first, his kids first. brendan mcdonough: jesse was a mentor, and he was a dad that i so desperately wanted to be like. desiree steed: he could handle all kinds of excruciating, backbreaking labor and work and actually enjoyed it. [music playing] todd abel: in arizona, june is usually kind of that month where everybody's hair on the back of your neck stands up, and we start getting higher temperatures. the relative humidity drops. the fuel moistures drop. kyle dickman: it was just perfectly primed for extreme fire behavior. todd abel: we start getting monsoon buildups, which sometimes throw out the dry lightning, which starts fires. the morning of june 30, the hotshots on the crew were woken up by a phone call. we got to go. we got a fire in yarnell. a lightning strike from a couple of days

ago started multiple fires. it was about 500 acres. the reason this fire was concerning was that it was on a ridgeline above a town. todd abel: there was peeples valley to the north. and then to the south-southeast was the town of yarnell. i remember getting out of the buggy, and jesse was like, hey, grab-- grab extra water today. it's going to be hot. todd abel: there's different strategies in wildland firefighting. we use fixed-wing airplanes and rotor-wing helicopters to help reduce the intensity of the fire. then we can get our men and women on there, our boots on the ground i call it, to actually finish putting it out. [chainsaw buzzing] john jessen: most effective, especially when fires are larger and stuff, is removing the fuels, creating control lines. kyle dickman: what they're doing is they're taking away what the fire eats so the fire can't burn it.

once you get to the edge of the fire, that's when the work really starts. yeah! ow! it's not just the backbreaking work of digging. digging, digging, digging for days on end. kyle dickman: they use chainsaws a lot. brendan mcdonough: you're removing everything for miles on end. so if that tree is 60 feet tall, you're cutting that entire tree down. it's not for the faint of heart. sometimes we do use fire to fight fires. kristen honig: using drip torches to burn the fuel in a controlled fashion so that by the time the main flaming front got there, there would be no more fuel for it to burn. and that would stop the fire's advance. todd abel: a lot of times, we'll do a lot of those firing operations at night, where we have better control

over what that looks like. kyle dickman: so june 30, the yarnell hill fire is just ripping to the north. and the priority is to stop this fire on the northern edge. and we start hiking in. we were on the fire's edge. the flaming front was two to three miles long. probably had 20-, 30-foot flame lengths. kyle dickman: jesse steed asked brendan "donut" mcdonough to act as a lookout down in the valley below the ridgeline. brendan mcdonough: and i hiked into my lookout spot closer towards the active edge of the fire, and i'm at a lower elevation. [music playing] i got the word from our fire behavior analyst that called and said, hey, we got some thunderstorm developments developing north of us. kyle dickman: thunderstorms are extremely dangerous to firefighters because they create erratic winds. and erratic winds create erratic fire behavior.

todd abel: that's what changes our environment. and that's what causes our injuries and some of our fatalities. kyle dickman: it was a warning to the hotshots that by the afternoon of june 30, they could be dealing with a fire that was completely different than it was behaving in the morning. [music playing]

kyle dickman: two things that firefighters pay the most attention to, fuels and weather.

paul hessburg: weather is one of the ficklest parts of a wildfire. mark finney: aside from drought or dry conditions, the wind is probably responsible for the greatest variation. another aspect of the wind that makes wildfires dangerous is the shifting direction. the wind can be coming out of the west, for example, and suddenly shift to coming out of the north. todd abel: so thunderstorm developments, it'll push wind multiple directions. [lightning crackling] brad elder: we've all been standing outside watching a front hit and suddenly get hit by this wall of wind. kyle dickman: what happens with these thunderstorms, they start to rain. brad elder: and that water is now falling, and it's pulling air with it. so we have this rush of air coming down, slamming into the ground and moving out in all directions. wherever that cell is, it could push winds from the north to the south, the south to the north. brad elder: if you don't know that's going to happen or know how it's going to shift, that's

a real dangerous situation. [music playing] kyle dickman: june 30, the yarnell hill fire is just ripping to the north. kyle dickman: and the hotshots were down on the southern edge, what's called the heel of the fire, which is essentially where it started. they were just supposed to start building line up around the fire to make sure that it didn't escape. and late in the afternoon-- thunderstorm hit probably around, i don't know, 4:15-ish. kyle dickman: all this cool air comes rushing down, and it races out across this desert. and it hits the fire. and suddenly, the fire pivots and turns direction. it had been running north. but it turned and ran south. brendan mcdonough: that's pretty uncommon to see a fire completely shift 180 degrees. kyle dickman: and it began running straight at brendan "donut" mcdonough, the lookout. brendan mcdonough: captain jesse reached out because he could

see where i was from up top. and so he called over the radio and said, "hey, donut, i think it's about time for you to get out of there, man. move fast." and i did that. got a ride down. and so now this fire has turned around. my brother is on the complete south end, and i am on the north end, opposite ends of this fire. so the granite mountain hotshots were in what's called the blacks. the best safety zone, where fire's already burnt. kyle dickman: all they were doing is watching the burn. they can just look down and see this ominous scene. there's these black smoke. it's dark. and it's just all the colors of hell sweeping down this valley toward this town. [music playing] it became very clear that the town of yarnell was imminently threatened by this fire. we started evacuating yarnell. man: we just pulled out. yarnell is blowing up.

kyle dickman: the granite mountain hotshots, they weren't doing a whole lot. they couldn't do a whole lot. so the hotshots decided to leave the safety of the black and move back toward the town of yarnell, where presumably they could do something to help the people that were soon to be threatened by the fire. and they're essentially climbing down these rocky cliffs into that canyon. and when they do, they know they're going to lose sight of the fire. they can't see the fire. and suddenly, the fire turns the corner of this ridge, pivoting and sweeping in front of them, fanning out into this flaming front. at exactly that moment, they realized that they are out of options. todd abel: it was moving so quick that there was no way that a human could outrun that fire. kyle dickman: suddenly, they come over the radio. and what he's saying is, we need help, and we need help right now. they're in trouble. brendan mcdonough: and i remember them trying to call in water. and that's when it became very frantic.

kyle dickman: at that moment, nobody really knew where granite mountain was. todd abel: the last conversation i had with them was granite mountain was in the black and that they were in a good spot. no one knew that they had moved to the south end like that. they are forced to do the only thing they can do in that instance, to deploy their fire shelters. fire shelters are just these small, thin blankets that reflect heat.

that's all they are. they are tents that you pitch up and you climb into. if you're deploying your fire shelter, it's a last-case scenario. that fire crew's in trouble. they're in trouble. a lot of things going through my brain at the same time of my heart being in my stomach. brendan mcdonough: the helicopter's trying to find them. and it's-- the smoke is just so thick. bravo 33: operations bravo 33. [music playing]

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i gotta get this deal... i know... faster wifi and savings? ...i don't want to miss that. that's amazing doc. mobile savings are calling. visit xfinitymobile.com to learn more. doc? kyle dickman: you have 19 firefighters standing in front of a flaming front. every firefighter on that fire, their jaws dropped and i'm sure their hearts broke because they now knew that their brothers, their colleagues were in very real danger. todd abel: we launched some helicopters to try to find them. i absolutely had all kinds of hope that the crew was going to be fine. and i'm just waiting on the radio

and waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting. and i hear there's 19 confirmed. there were 19 dead bodies in the canyon. i can feel it in my heart right now and in my stomach right now talking about it. it was devastating. absolutely devastating. i remember just sobbing. every negative emotion that could be felt, i just felt in that moment. i remember walking in, and they're just-- everybody was crying. and we were told that they were all gone. kyle dickman: and this was the worst fire tragedy that had happened in a generation. todd abel: they were fathers, sons, brothers, husbands, the whole nine yards. they were good people. they enjoyed wildland firefighting. they had the passion for it. the fact that i can tell my children

that their father died a hero has made a huge difference. they can be proud of him for everything that he did. kyle dickman: the nation was captivated by it for months. and they ended up making a hollywood movie no matter what you hear-- we've got several aircraft coming to you. --no matter what's going on-- we can't go back up there. --stay together-- tell me when you hear the aircraft, ok? --and look out for each other because you're a family. no one could be prouder of his boys than i am of you guys. and the fires that we fought when when we were young are nothing like the fires of today. they're really, really dangerous. and they're very, very threatening. todd abel: longer duration, definitely larger fires. how do you manage something like that? paul hessburg: in the western united states, the fire season is 40 to 80 days longer.

in california, the fire season is nearly year-round today. steve pyne: the climate is-- is morphing in ways that enhance fire. it's acting as a performance enhancer. smoke has been carrying the fire problem to areas that otherwise are immune to it. reporter: smoke from those fires traveling more than 500 miles. it's philadelphia, boston, new york city, all the way to the nation's capital. paul hessburg: the air quality index just ballooned in many of these metropolitan areas. more people are being challenged by smoke-related injury to human health. reporter: wildfire smoke contains particulate matter, or pm 2.5. among the tiniest and most dangerous pollutants, it's able to infiltrate the lungs and enter the bloodstream and has been linked to conditions like asthma and heart disease. the need to do something is urgent. we have a lot of tools in the toolbox.

one of them is using prescribed burning. prescribed burning is intentional burning to invite the right kind of wildfire back to the forest. there's a tremendous amount of science and skill that go into this prescribed burning. 99.8% of them stay within the line. it produces a tenth of the smoke. so the numbers are really good. steve pyne: some of these areas, we can go in, we can thin. not log, thin out. it's a kind of woody weeding. but it's the fire that matters most. if you do the thinning but don't do the fire, you're not really solving the problem. burning where you've got residents or small communities embedded in the landscape around, very difficult. but almost certainly, they are going to burn. and if we don't do it in some way, then they're going to burn probably in the worst possible way. kyle dickman: it's like, you can pick your poison, right? like, you're either going to have prescribed fires, or you're going to have more big wildfires. [music playing]

steve pyne: well, all this requires a political and social mechanism for us to come together and argue over differences in values, what we want public lands to be, how we want to do it. and we're facing the point where we simply cannot pretend that we can control all these fires as we would wish. [music playing] kyle dickman: we can only do so much to insulate ourselves from those tragedies. like, the way that the system works and the environment is changing, like, these are just-- they are realities. desiree steed: i want jesse to be remembered for his strength of character. he had a lot of integrity. he was a great dad, a great husband. brendan mcdonough: everyone's journey after the tragedy has been different. there's a lot to learn from it.

for me, it's been giving back and, you know, paying it forward and trying to help people understand their sacrifice. karen davis, the nurse who survived the entrapment in the mega fire in paradise, california, says she lost everything in the inferno. battling the trauma from the flames, she decided to move to las vegas to be closer to her daughter and rebuild her shattered life. once there, karen continued her career in health care. she also decided to become a member of the henderson, nevada, community emergency response team, aiming to help others in future emergencies. a testament to her inner strength and resiliency. for more information on what you can do in a wildfire and how to combat the growing climate crisis, please go to cnn.com/violentearth. i'm liev schreiber. thanks for watching. good night.