“Where humans meet wild forests”: In a primal view, the wildfires ravaging communities in northern California represent the chaos that can unspool in those liminal spaces “between the wilds and the built,” Wired writes—the type of disaster that humans can’t fully harness:

A fire’s progress through the forests and wildlands of North America isn’t exactly formulaic, but scientists understand it reasonably well. In the city, though? “Most wildland firefighters are not trained in structural protecti…