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For days now, a cloud of acrid smoke has settled over the Bay Area, blown down from the Kincade Fire in the north. More than 200,000 people have been evacuated from that fire alone, while the lingering effects of a long drought and high winds have turned the region into a tinderbox. On Sunday, a sudden fire in Vallejo stopped traffic on a bridge across the northeast side of the bay, forcing workers to abandon toll booths as the bridge was swallowed with smoke. It’s a scary moment, made scarier by the slow grind of the climate crisis in the background, getting a little bit worse each year.
Fires are a fact of life in California, but the state’s fire season…