November 15, 2018: At least 72 people have been killed in wildfires across California including 66 civilians and 6 firefighters.
According to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and the National Interagency Fire Center, this is one of the most destructive wildfire seasons on record in California, with a total of 7,579 fires burning an area of 1,667,855 acres, the largest amount of burned acreage recorded in a fire season.
Fatalities have been identified in San Benito, Siskiyo, Mariposa, Shasta, Mendocino Lake, Butte and Los Angeles, Ventura areas.
A research on California wildfires carried out by University of California, Berkeley Center for Catastrophic Risk Management, published in August 2018, predicted an increase in the number of wildfires as a consequence of climate change.