By BRIAN MELLEY LOS ANGELES (AP) — Smoke from California’s wildfires choked people on the East Coast. Flames wiped out a gold rush-era town. Ash covers area that would dwarf Rhode Island. Images of homes engulfed in flames and mountains glowing like lava would make it easy to conclude the Golden State is a charred black landscape. That’s hardly the case, but the frightening reality is that the worst