Bad air in the Bay Area. Sept. 13, 2020 PALO ALTO, Calif. - The heavy smoke from wildfires that hung over California for just about a month may have contributed to the deaths of between 1,000 and 3,000 people, Stanford researchers said in a new report, many more people than the 26 who actually died as a direct result of the blazes."While media coverage on fire impacts has justifiably focused on the lives that have immediately been lost to the fire, the total costs in terms of human lives and health is likely far larger," the researchers wrote, "due to the immense amount of smoke that has been inhaled over the last three weeks by the very large number of people living on the West Coast." Between Aug.