The San Francisco skyline is obscured by smoke from wildfires in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Friday, Nov. 16, 2018. (Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg)
(Bloomberg) — During the 2018 Camp Fire, which lasted 17 days and killed 85 people, residents of nearby Northern California communities breathed in enough smoke to equal half a pack of cigarettes. Many of the questions being asked then sound eerily familiar today. Should schools close? Who should wear a mask? Then as now, answers from officials often made the situation more confusing, not less.
"Even county to county or community to community, you got very different information on what you should be doing," says Marshall Burke, a Stanford University professor of earth system science.
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