Wildfire-weary Californians, ‘tired of this being normal,’ consider uprooting their lives

It’s not just the nearly 7,900 wildfires that have consumed more than 3.4 million acres and claimed 26 lives in California that have Arthur Gies looking online for apartments in New York.

“It’s not necessarily this year of wildfires so much as the dam breaking on the realization that this is not just the new normal but just a prelude to what’s coming,” the 39-year-old Oakland resident says. “And just being sort of tired of this being normal.”