Nearly 5,000 homes were destroyed or damaged when fires swept through Sonoma County in October. Among the hardest-hit neighborhoods was the community of Fountaingrove. Although many residents were not aware, fire had scorched a similar area of the county in 1964. The main difference: decades of development and sprawl into previously wild areas.

Sources: U.S. Department of Agriculture Farm Service Agency, Landsat 4, Landsat 5, Planet Labs Inc., CAL FIRE damage inspection reports

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Eric Sagara is a senior data reporter for Reveal. He joined Reveal following a news applications fellowship at ProPublica, where he worked on projects about pharmaceutical payments to doctors, deadly force in police agencies and the trail of guns in the United States. Prior to that, he was a reporter on The Newark Star-Ledger's data team. Sagara is originally from Arizona, where he reported on business, education, crime, wildfires and government. He is based in Reveal's Emeryville, California, office.