World News for Students of English

15-02-2019 15:00

Last November, there were several terrible wildfires in California. They were the deadliest in the state’s history. Just one of the fires killed 86 people and destroyed the most buildings in California’s history.

About 19,000 buildings burned to the ground.

Many people were insured and they want their money. The insurance claims from the fires are at $11.4 billion. This makes these fires the most expensive fires in California ever.

People said that the largest electric company in California may have caused some of the large wildfires in 2017 and 2018 because of its faulty wires and the weather starting fires. The company has to pay a lot of money to fix the problems. The company filed for bankruptcy.

Difficult words:  insurance claim (when you get money for an accident or a natural disaster because you paid money to a company in case that could happen), file for bankruptcy (when a company tells the government that it is running out of money and cannot continue to work), faulty (when something works incorrectly).

You can watch the original video in the Level 3 section.