We've seen (and some have felt) the destruction wrought by the wildfires that recently swept through Southern California: homes destroyed, communities displaced, and study sites burned.

But the National Institutes of Health is also considering the delay that the California fires may cause in grant application submissions from researchers in the area. The NIH issued a notice at the end of October encouraging potential grantees affected by the fires to continue submitting applications, even though they've missed deadlines. The notice instructs fire-effected grant application authors to include cover letters detailing the reasons for the delay, which "will generally not exceed the time period that an institution is closed or an evacuation order is imposed."