By Annie Correal

TAYLORSVILLE, Calif. — In the six long weeks since the Dixie fire, the second-largest blaze on record in California, erupted in the northern Sierra Nevada, the fire has scorched vast tracts of forest, incinerated gold-rush towns, and upended thousands of lives, forcing people across 1,000 square miles to flee their homes.

Through it all, the scattered residents of the area around Greenville, a town of about 1,000 that was all but destroyed early this month, have been able to count on one thing, at least: the raspy, reassuring voice of Daniel Kearns helping them to make sense of what is going on back home.

Mr. Kearns, a volunteer firefighter from nearby Taylorsville, posts daily live videos online that explain the latest fire activity maps — which at a glance might look as though the fire had swallowed the place whole — and that show that reality on the ground, though very, very smoky, is a little less terrifying than it might appear from afar.

“Only through all this can I hear that the fire is around our family home and feel calm about it,” Michaela Garcia wrote about Mr. Kearns’s videos this week from Chico. “Thank you, Dan, we are truly so lucky.””

A former Marine, Mr. Kearns, 39, can project calm even when the mountain behind him is on fire and pouring smoke — as it was this week while the fire menaced Taylorsville — or when it is approaching places he knows well. “My mom’s,” he said recently, pointing at the map.

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