The PD, as the daily is known, quickly had 14 reporters and four photographers in the field. “Our people,” he said, “were in the teeth of it.”

The firestorm lasted 30 days, killing 40 people and destroying more than 6,100 homes. Mr. Appel recalls an exhausting grind — part war zone, part marathon — that engulfed every member of his staff. The line between duty and safety soon blurred: Evacuated reporters slept in the newsroom, dogs and children ran between the desks.

“This wasn’t just a big news story for us,” Mr. Appel said. “This happened to people we knew, it happened to our town.”

For its “lucid and tenacious coverage” of the wildfires, the staff of The Press Democrat was awarded the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting. It beat out The Houston Chronicle, for its coverage of Hurricane Harvey, and The New York Times, for our reporting of the mass shooting in Las Vegas.

Since the announcement this week, pride in the locally owned, 121-year-old newspaper has swelled. “It’s been a shot in the arm for everybody,” Mayor Chris Coursey said.