National Geographic: Dr. Praveen Buddiga knew he would find a packed waiting room when he arrived at his office that warm September day in California's Central Valley. White flakes drifted from the sky, as if he were inside a snow globe.
The Rough Fire, a 152,000-acre blaze sparked by lightning in the Sequoia National Forest, was lofting thick smoke, soot, and ash into the air-and into the lungs of Buddiga's patients 35 miles away, in Fresno.
As an allergist, Buddiga knows that wildfires pose a serious, sometimes...