Giving Compass' Take:

 • Pacific Standard reports on how every level of government understood the dangers of a potential fire in California's Redding area — but few steps were taken to prevent catastrophe.

• Rather than dwell on blame, this information can be used to improve resiliency and disaster preparation in the future.

• Here's how California funders took action to provide relief for those affected by the wildfires.

On the afternoon of July 23rd, a tire on a recreational trailer blew apart on the pavement of State Route 299 about 15 miles northwest of Redding, California. The couple towing the Grey Wolf Select trailer couldn't immediately pull it out of traffic. As they dragged it to a safe turnout, sparks arced from the tire's steel rim. Three reached the nearby grass and shrubs; two along the highway's south shoulder, the third on the north. Each of the sparks ignited what at first seemed like commonplace brush fires.

But if the sparking of the brush fires was an unpredictable accident, what happened next was not. Fire jumped from the roadside into the Whiskeytown National Recreation Area, a 42,000-acre unit of the National Park Service. There, it gained size and velocity, and took off for the outskirts of Redding. The fire burned for 39 days and charred over 229,000 acres, and when the last embers died on August 30th, the fight to contain it had cost $162 million, an average of $4.15 million a day. Almost 1,100 homes were lost. Eight people died, four of them first responders.

Dozens of interviews and a review of local, state, and federal records show that virtually every aspect of what came to be known as the Carr Fire — where it ignited; how and where it exploded in dimension and ferocity; the toll in private property — had been forecast and worried over for years. Every level of government understood the dangers and took few, if any, of the steps needed to prevent catastrophe.

Read the full article about how California failed to prevent the Carr fire by Keith Schneider at Pacific Standard.