In 2003, the Cedar Fire swept through Southern California’s San Diego County, consuming more than 273,000 acres, destroying nearly 3,000 structures, and killing 15 people. It was the state’s worst wildfire since the Tunnel Fire hit the densely populated hills of the Bay Area’s Alameda County in 1991. Although the affected area was a tiny fraction of Cedar’s size, Tunnel destroyed the same number of structures and killed nearly twice the number of people.

Since then, California’s wildfires have reached a level of nearly incomprehensible destructiveness. The Camp Fire, which struck a rural region up north in 2018, killed nearly as many people, and destroyed nearly as many structures, as the combined totals of the state’s nine other alltime worst fires. This year’s North Complex Fire, in the same region, has consumed almost as much acreage as those nine others combined—and it’s still burning after two months.

This animation uses fire perimeter data from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection's Fire and Resource Assessment Program (FRAP) along with the USA Current Wildfires feature layer from the Living Atlas of the World. Please see the links below.

This animated map was made using Esri's ArcGIS Pro, Cinema 4D, DEM Earth, Redshift, and Adobe After Effects. Please visit http://ow.ly/fm2950xgu0B for more information about ArcGIS Pro.

Data Source: Fire Perimeters at https://frap.fire.ca.gov/mapping/gis...
USA Current Wildfires: http://ow.ly/Rtu050BSIjN

Music: Nightfall Hymn by Yehezkel Raz


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