wildfires

After this year's historic wildfires, California's oldest state park — Big Basin Redwoods — looks more like a logging village than an iconic hiking and camping mecca.

There's a near constant buzz of chainsaws. Rumblings from trucks and logging skidders fill the air as crews busily cut charred, fallen trees and chop down "hazard trees" rangers worry will topple on to the park's roadways.

After record-breaking wildfires this year, thousands of people across the West are still clearing piles of charred debris where their homes once stood in the hope of rebuilding their lives.

With climate change fueling bigger, more destructive wildfires, rebuilding offers an opportunity to create more fire-resistant communities by using building materials that can help homes survive the next blaze.

Earlier this month California Gov. Gavin Newsom, looking uncharacteristically wan and frustrated, stood in the burnt ruins of an elementary school in Napa County obliterated by yet another catastrophic blaze.

It's a scene the governor acknowledged has become painfully familiar across the Golden State.

Weekend snowfall granted a reprieve against the two largest wildfires in Colorado history, which together have spread over more than 400,000 acres.

But the fires continue to burn. The East Troublesome Fire spread 192,560 acres and jumped the Continental Divide. It is 15% contained.

The nearby Cameron Peak Fire, the largest blaze in state history, is now 64% contained. It has already burned over 208,600 acres.

Jennifer Montano watches her two kids' faces as they quietly clamber out of the car in their driveway in Vacaville, Calif. It's been a week since the children were last home, but where their house once stood, there's ash and rubble now.

In August, the Montanos' house was destroyed by the LNU Lightning Complex Fire, one of more than 10,000 structures lost in record-breaking blazes across the West this year.

Each family had their reasons for ending up in harm's way.

For the Harts, it was the chance to have a large backyard in a quiet part of Ashland, Ore. The porch of the Baltimore house was perfect for Scott Harris' barbecue equipment. Kevin Boudreaux had grown up on the bayou and wanted to settle near his childhood home in Cameron, La.

Updated at 4:37 p.m. ET

In a reversal, the White House has approved California's request for federal disaster relief for wildfire recovery, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday.

California is dealing with the damage caused by wildfires that have burned through nearly 3,000 square miles, killing at least three people and destroying nearly 1,000 homes.

The Glass Fire burning in Northern California wine country has forced thousands from their homes, among them the residents of a tiny home village built to help people transition out of homelessness. For those who've spent years — or decades — on the streets, it's a traumatic displacement.

Malden is a tiny farming town amid eastern Washington's "oceans of wheat fields."

Or it was.

When a wind-driven firestorm raced into town on Labor Day, James Jacobs and most of the town's some 300 other residents lost their homes.

"Everything's gone," Jacobs says. "Everything is completely lost."

Ariel Kinzinger had a headache. Clark Brinkman coughed and wheezed. LaNesha Collins, feeling physically fine, was frustrated by another day mostly trapped inside looking out at a sepia sun, in Portland, Ore.

"I've never been in the thick of smoke like this," said Collins, an Oregonian like the others. "It's insane."