While the insurance cost of the devastation is estimated to be around $30 billion, another tally puts the total damage at upward of $250 billion.

After two major fires caused historic damage to the greater Los Angeles area, several Princeton students who call the Golden State home have had to navigate local evacuation orders while coping with the fact that they may never see their homes.

In the era when American cities regularly caught fire, the widespread destruction seeded what looks, in retrospect, like possibility.