Into the Inferno: A Photographer’s Journey into California’s Megafires and Fallout

Fire is a gift given to man by Prometheus, but somehow this emblazoned award turns into a spectacularly horrific force when it loses restraint and initiates forest fires. Many of these appallingly destructive catastrophes have been recorded by wildfire photographer Stuart Palley.

Here, in this gripping memoir, he records his fascination with his views of the burning vistas, his heroic attempts to photograph the spectacular power that the consuming flames discharge. He learns the firefighting routines, runs with the firefighters, interviews the rescuers and rescued from the burning sites, empathizes with the difficulties faced by firefighters, and anguishes over the damage to inhabitants, workers, property, forest lands, and the psyche of all those involved.

The reader senses the heat-induced sweat, smells the noxious smoke, feels the embers singe, watches the buildings exploding in flames, sighs at all the melted metal structures, and counts the burned victims as uncontrolled nature takes charge. Eight years of forest fires mostly in the California area, many fanned by the Santa Ana winds, others due to environmental or human incidents are recorded, but all can be attributed to climate change, loss of water, warmer temperatures, aridity. Our changing climate is definitely leading us into Dante’s Inferno.