Experts say a massive wildfire in northern California and scores of smaller ones across the western U.S. and Canada are the legacy of the nation’s fire-suppression experts and climate change. Fighting such fires going forward will require a shift toward using smaller controlled fires to ward off bigger ones, as indigenous people did for centuries. Blockbuster fires, like what are burning now, are harder for the landscape to bounce back from than smaller ones. But change won’t be easy because communities have sprung up near where underbrush has built up for decades, experts say.
