It doesn't sound like things improved overnight. In reading the most recent Google News listing, Forbes has the following sentence:

"One person has been killed, more than 20 people injured and around 260,000 acres have been destroyed in the fires, which are some of the worst in the state's history."

I think they should more acurately say the 260,000 acres have burned or blackened, they haven't been destroyed, because the land is still there. The stuff on the land has been burned and it if was real property it was destroyed. But once the fires are over it's a pretty remarkable process how the land can quickly heal from a fire, depending on the grade, amount of damage, etc. It's one of the things that made work as a fire fighter and timber crew employee in the Forest Service so interesting, to go to places burned last year, the year before that, several years previous (intentionally or wildfire) and see how the plants and animals return. Whether I fought the fire on that land or not, the evolution of returning life is fascinating.

This is a note to file in the back of your head for long after the chaos and pathos of today's fires have passed.

SRS