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.
Twenty-five years ago, a fire in the Oakland Hills demonstrated the serious risks in areas where homes intersect with nature. We talked to the lead meteorologist on duty the night of the blaze.
Wildfires are getting bigger, more expensive to fight and closer than ever to where people live. The consequences can be deadly. The next episode of Reveal examines how wildfires got so dangerous – and how some areas are fighting back.
Wildfires, long considered a problem exclusive to the West, now threaten many other parts of the country as extreme weather becomes more commonplace and more people live in areas at risk for wildfire.
The lethal Valley Fire that destroyed nearly 2,000 buildings and killed at least four people in 2015 was started by faulty wiring at a home outside the community of Cobb, California, an investigation found.
The current water year has been the wettest since the drought began, and winter snow returned to the Sierra Nevada this year. But parts of the state still will see drought conditions.
Satellite data is a new tool in newsrooms to examine changing patterns on the land. We used it to show how three destructive California wildfires spread so quickly.
