Like most days, I’m writing from the South of Market section of San Francisco, more than an hour’s drive away from the closest wildfire. And the inside of my office smells of smoke. It’s everywhere in the Bay Area. While I’m delivering the news as usual, my thoughts are with my friends who have lost houses, or who have had to evacuate their homes and still don’t know what they’ll find when they get back. Here’s the latest on California’s wildfires. “It just came through there, like a blow torch … I saw firetrucks racing up Martin West and then, five minutes later, I saw them racing down. I said, time to get out of here.”

+ Mercury News: Santa Rosa fire: How a sudden firestorm devastated a city.

+ InFocus: Photos of California’s Destructive Wildfires.