Just breathing the smoke for days on end is bad. Our grandson evacuated from his college, Chico State, for a day. My sister lives in El Cajon, and they are at some risk from a nearby canyon that is full of trees, mostly eucalyptus, which burns like gasoline, it seems.

There are rational arguments for letting small fires burn in forests, to help avoid larger fires later. I read they the number of fires in recent years is less, but the fires are just bigger and uncontrollable because of the "fight every fire" strategy that's been followed.