This is absolutely untrue. Sure, the red flag warning set in today, but wildfire risk was considered to be at very high levels for (quite literally) weeks. See Tweets from way before the Creek Fire: [1][2][3] Just mild research would indicate that hiking (for days) deep in the wilderness would be a bad idea. It's just profoundly irresponsible. And, as someone that's done NorCal during this time previously, it's not comparable to prior years (except iirc maybe like 3 years ago when it was also a particularly hot summer).
> there are many hundreds of thousands of Californians (myself included) who also headed up into the Sierra this weekend.
There's a difference between doing some light camping or a day trip to the Sierras as opposed to hiking for several days deep in the wilderness during a heatwave.
> ...there's not really any evidence to suggest that these folks made a foolish or dangerous decision
This is the kind of shit that gets people killed. It was most definitely foolish and dangerous. Sometimes bad things happen to extremely experienced adventurers: flash floods, avalanches, etc. This was not that. It was a bunch of Instagrammers that wanted to "get away" without having any kind of respect for mother nature or what she can throw at you.
[1] https://twitter.com/R5_Fire_News/status/1302311140815298560/...
[2] https://twitter.com/NWSSacramento/status/1301932248313200640
[3] https://twitter.com/NWSLosAngeles/status/1301255674655956992...