The California wildfires that have recently started are a stark reminder of things to come — not only have more and more houses been built in areas suspectible to fire, but the whole state has been experiencing a multi-year drought.

To help with our unit on Natural Disasters, I thought I’d put together a quick list of accessible resources about the Santa Barbara fires, and on forest fires in general.

You might also find these other “The Best…” lists particularly useful:

The Best Websites For Learning About Natural Disasters

The Best Sites To Learn About The Fires In Australia

Here are my picks for The Best Sites To Learn About The California Wildfires:

Wildfires Out of Control In Santa Barbara is a slideshow from The Wall Street Journal.

California Fire Burns On is a slideshow from The New York Times.

The Wall Street Journal has an online video on the fires.

Here are three panoramic photos from The Los Angeles Times of different fires in the area.

Here’s a photo gallery from the LA Times, as well as a video.

MSNBC has a slideshow on the Santa Barbara fire.

Weather Wiz Kids has a particularly accessible explanation of how forest fires are begun — and stopped.

Here’s a description of how forest fires start that is probably accessible to high Intermediate English Language Learners.

The page on the Smokey Bear website focused on Wildfires Burning has a lot of information on different aspects of forest fires, and much of it is pretty accessible.

CBS News has an excellent interactive on U.S. Wildfires.

Fierce Winds Fuel California Wild Fires is a series of photos from the Sacramento Bee.

More homes evacuated in Jesusita fire is another series of photos from The Sacramento Bee.

Santa Barbara Wildfire is a Yahoo News slideshow.

Here’s an Associated Press video on the wildfires.

CNN has an interactive timeline about California wildfires and a slideshow on the one happening now.

Fire Still Burning In Santa Barbara is a slideshow from The Wall Street Journal.

Santa Barbara Fires
is a slideshow from The Sacramento Bee.

The Associated Press has an interactive about recent and past wildfires.

Suggestions and feedback, as always, are welcome.

If you found this post useful, you might want to look at previous “The Best…” lists and also consider subscribing to this blog for free.