![]() ![]() On Thursday morning, he said he was 95% sure his home had burned down because of its location within the fire line. The building that housed the auto parts store where Machlan once worked was gone. The library in town where his wife once worked also burned down. The family of his wife’s daughter, who had just a month ago moved into a home they were remodeling in Greenville, had their house burn down. Machlan said they spoke to his wife’s family in Chester, a town 20 miles north of Greenville that was under imminent threat itself Thursday. “Everybody who didn’t believe it in Greenville is now a climate refugee.” “After Paradise went up a couple of years ago, it was really just a matter of time until it happened to more mountain communities.” ![]() “I had a feeling that this was going to happen this year,” Machlan said, citing the driest conditions he’s ever seen in the Sierra Nevada. It’s where they started hearing about the Dixie fire. They were out of the country in February of 2020 and because of the pandemic decided to stay there instead of risk flying home. They would leave town in December or January and return in June. Since 2015, he and his wife would spend six months living on a sailboat in the Caribbean and six months in Greenville. “We’d go to the local grocery store and sometimes it would take over an hour to get out, just to run in and get a gallon of milk or something, because we knew everybody.” It was a town where “everyone knows everybody.” He grew emotional as he described a town with residents of varying political beliefs but who pitched in to help one another regardless. ![]()
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