Comparing disasters

The photos of destruction coming out after the terrible Californian fires are quite something.  

I was curious as to how it compared to the harm caused by the Victorian Black Saturday fires, which sort of set the modern Australian image of how bad our bushfires can be.

A quick Google would indicate that 2,029 homes were destroyed in our home-grown disaster (but apparently another 1,000 or so buildings too.)    Number of people killed: 173.

The Californian fire is being reported as having destroyed about 12,000 homes, and while the death toll is still currently below 100, there's another 700 missing.  (Which really seems an extraordinary number after this time.)

So yeah, at least in property destruction, the Californian fires are already on a much larger scale, and may well end up having killed many more people too.