For days, the sun and moon were blood-orange—that is, if you could see them through the thick haze of ashes and smoke. Three major wildfires in California in November—the Camp Fire in Northern California, the Woolsey and Hill Fires in Southern California—devoured hundreds of thousands of acres, killing at least 80 people and destroying thousands of homes. In some areas, the haze was so dense that it tinted everything orange-yellow, as though the world had transformed into an old sepia photograph.
But for residents of Thousand Oaks, a hilly, oaky suburbia about 40 miles northwest of Los Angeles, the Nov. 8 arrival of the massive Woolsey Fire—scorching an area the size of Denver—was only the second crisis to hit in one week. The first struck the night of Nov. 7, when a local man shattered the sounds of laughter and country music with gunshots at the Borderline Bar & Grill.
