[Avalon Memories]

It’s a tragedy the likes of which our nation has never seen before.

This is a flat out lie. Whether the author lied due to ignorance or malice, I can't say, but it is a lie nevertheless. This nation has seen many terrible tragedies, some caused by nature and some by humans. One example of each -- natural and human-caused: The hurricane in 1900 that wiped out Galveston, TX, and the 2001 terrorist attacks in the states of New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania.

[robowombat]

There have also been much larger numbers of (as in the hundreds) fatalities as a result of forest fires in 1871 in Minnesota, in 1896 again in Minnesota, and in 1918 in Michigan and Wisconsin. The largest fire in history is still the so-called Big Blow Up in 1911 when several large fires burning in Montana and Idaho merged into a super fire system. The full total of dead will never be known but the Forest Service had something like 50 fire fighters killed.