What happens when wildland fire reaches the city?

“Wildfire” is the word we tend to use when we talk about what Los Angeles has been dealing with the past week.
But Lori Moore-Merrell, the U.S. Fire Administrator for the Federal Emergency Management Agency used a different word, when she spoke to NPR this morning.

She described a “conflagration.” Saying they’re not wildland fires with trees burning. They’re structure to structure fire spread.

They may have started at the suburban fringe, but they didn’t stay there. Which prompts a question: what happens when fire meets city?

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(Image credit: Apu Gomes)