Skid Row Marathon, Land on Fire

Skid Row Marathon Guest: Judge Craig Mitchell, Los Angeles county Superior Court; Founder of the Midnight Mission Running Club More than eight-thousand people live in cardboard boxes and makeshift tents in the 50-block area of downtown Los Angeles known as Skid Row. Several times a week, early in the morning, criminal court judge Craig Mitchell leads a group of homeless, formerly homeless, recovering addicts and prison parolees on a run through skid row. And every year or so, they do a marathon together. But it’s about more than just running, says David Askew. Land of Fire Guest: Gary Ferguson, Author of “Land on Fire: The New Reality of Wildfire in the West” The season for wildfires has arrived and risk is high across Nevada and the northern California. This may be surprising considering the wet winter the west coast had last year from all the rain and flooding, but ironically, that’s exactly why the fire risk is higher as we head into these hot dry months. It turns out that all the rain caused wild grasses to grow like wildfire in the Spring, and now they’re drying out, making the perfect tinder for wildfires.    The story of fires in the west is full of such contradictions. Here’s another—and this is a really big one—wildfires are burning hotter and faster than ever before precisely because we’ve spent the last 50 years trying to prevent them from catching.