00:00On July 13th, 2021, a fire started burning in Boot County, California.
00:08This fire would last for four months, turning into a mega fire that swallowed 963,000 acres.
00:15It was later to be called the Dixie Fire, after Dixie Road, near where the fire started.
00:21The cost of damages this fire caused was estimated to be over $1 billion,
00:25and $636 million of those dollars were the cost for suppressing this fire.
00:33We are in Greenville, California, on Main Street.
00:42Specifically, where are you standing exactly?
00:45This was our home.
00:48It was completely burned up and demolished in the Dixie Fire back in August.
00:55Some of my wife's jewelry.
00:59We bought this house in 2010, with big grand dreams of remodeling it.
01:06And it took us about six years to remodel this home.
01:12It was just our dream home.
01:15It just burned the entire town.
01:17Just complete destruction.
01:19I've heard about 500 homes, and a lot of people are still trying to figure out what they're going to do,
01:25you know, what their insurance will pay for, what they can afford to do,
01:29if they're going to rebuild, if they're going to relocate.
01:31There's still a lot of uncertainty in it.
01:35I never thought I'd say anything like this in my lifetime.
01:37A lot of unfortunate loss has occurred.
01:43It really requires us, as it grows out, to change our approach in terms of how we might manage in those landscapes.
01:49Well, the Forest Service and Cal Fire and the land managers have been letting this fuel load stock up for 30 years.
01:57And it's, it exploded.
02:03There's two ideas, you know, half the Forest Service thinks that we should manage the forest and utilize what it gives us.
02:09And the other half thinks we should just walk away and leave it, let it burn over.
02:12And that's what we did, and I don't think it's right.
02:17In many regards, we're in uncharted territory, as the growth of the WUI has far exceeded the development
02:23of how we manage the landscape and fight these megafires.
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