The death toll certainly makes it a news story, plus the vast destruction of property.
That is more than *a little worse than usual*.
We have people on here (FR) who are just nuts when it comes to any kind of evidence vs. what they want to believe. Like the ones discounting “grass fires”. I’d like to set them out for just a moment in front of the grass fire in a field near my P’s old place, many moons ago. Dry grass and weeds 6+ feet tall (both) pushed by a maybe 30 mph wind. Flames 20+ ft. high. I can’t imagine if it was 80 mph. (Square of the velocity, right?) The thing that “saved us” was that both my Dad and our neighbor kept a wide strip (we kids used it to play football) mowed well into that property.
(Dad was a Forester and fought quite a few fires in his youth.)