'Everything's Gone': Rural Washington Struggles After 'Blow Torch' Of A Wildfire
The 2020 wildfire season is a grim reminder that disasters unfairly hit the poor and the elderly. Thousands of people on the West Coast still lack even temporary housing.
Malden is a tiny farming town amidst eastern Washington's "oceans of wheat fields."
Or it was.
When a wind-driven firestorm raced into town on Labor Day, James Jacobs and most of the town's some 300 other residents lost their homes.
"Everything's gone," Jacobs says. "Everything is completely lost."
Like many others in Malden, which skewed older and lower income, Jacobs didn't have insurance. The 2020 wildfire season is the latest troubling reminder that disasters unfairly hit society's most vulnerable. On the West Coast, it's thought that thousands of people are still lacking even just basic, temporary housing.
With help from the Red Cross, Jacobs
