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“It’s pretty bleak,” said Mike Flannigan, a fire scientist at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia.

“It’s a community ignition and community structure problem,” said longtime fire scientist Jack Cohen.

Yana Valachovic, a fire scientist at the University of California, said some of the spared houses were tucked away from prevailing wind currents so that embers didn’t hit them.

But a new study from SMU fire scientist Christopher Roos published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution shows that climate is an undervalued part of the equation.

Jennifer Balch, who’s a fire scientist, told the Denver Post, “Climate change is definitely a part of this story, in that fire seasons are longer.”