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Stuart Palley

Carlos Jesus, a second year wildland firefighter from Salem, Oregon, works to extinguish flames around a giant sequoia.

Wildland firefighters clear debris around the base of a giant sequoia tree to protect it from the coming fire.

A scorched landscape is all that’s left of this area in the Sequoia National Forest after the Windy Fire burned through.

Falling embers and creeping flames from the Windy Fire create an eerie, threatening glow in the Long Meadow Grove.

A wildland firefighter hoses down flames near a giant sequoia tree in the Long Meadow Grove along the Trail of 100 Giants. The trees are threatened by the Windy Fire in the Sequoia National Forest.

California suffered its worst fire season on record this year. Here a firefighter walks through the Sierra National Forest, burned in the ongoing Creek Fire, which started in early September. The largest single wildfire in the state’s history, it has burned nearly 380,000 acres. Firefighters hope to contain it by the end of the year. (From: Witness California's record blazes through the eyes of frontline firefighters)

The Bear Fire burns near Oroville and the Plumas National Forest in California on Sept. 9, 2020. The blaze scorched over 200,000 acres in the previous 24-hour period, driven by strong winds. The fire originally started in August during a powerful lightning storm that swept across the northern and central parts of the state, but exploded in size when winds hit the fire three weeks later.

Covered in ash and dirt, a CAL FIRE crew takes a break after a day spent building firelines to contain the El Dorado Fire in the San Bernardino Mountains. The men were working on little sleep and in extreme heat, cutting and scraping away vegetation.

A CAL FIRE crew working the Bear Fire near the Bloomer Hill fire lookout. Retardants dropped by air tankers can help slow the spread of wildfires, CAL FIRE aviation chief Dennis Brown told Helvarg, "but it’s boots on the ground that put out fires.”