But responsibility, ultimately, was the homeowner's.

The link is an interesting story of two people who bought what amount to nearly-identical value homes in the same place, and both were destroyed by the LA fires.

It is painted as a story of inequity and an insurance "crisis" -- but if you read carefully you'll discern an important difference:

There was another catch: Wilson said he couldn’t get comprehensive replacement cost coverage on the FAIR Plan because his roof was too old. Instead, he ended up with what is known as “actual cash value” coverage, which greatly limits the payout based on the physical depreciation of what was lost.

Rather than replace the roof he took the cheaper option, even though roofs are an item that wear out and insurance companies look very closely at that because water and wind damage from roof failures is one of the top causes of loss.

When I lived in Florida after Ivan we had the "pup company" and "secondary lines" issue already -- that is, there were many firm that wouldn't write on a home near the water at all, and those that did were typically smaller insurers.  I had an independent broker that shopped it on an annual basis and it had been stable for a fear years -- but suddenly, not.

This was the reason -- they were able to place it on the condition that I replaced my roof.  It was not leaking and on inspection it was considered serviceable, but to keep reasonable-cost coverage and not get forced into "actual cash value" my option was to replace it.

Was this "fair"?  Well, from my point of view perhaps not but the insurance company has data that is across their policy base that roofs that are older than "X" are more-likely to fail and if they do it will generate a large loss.  Therefore if you decide that your "30 year" roof must go 30 years because its not leaking now and the 30 years isn't up that's fine -- but the company is not going to take the risk without you paying for it.

I replaced the roof -- the difference in premium was recovered in three years.  Yeah, it was that large of a difference.

This guy didn't change the roof and instead made the decision to take the actual cash value policy, which sounded better at the time but now he's stuck with a large uninsured loss because the coverage is insufficient.

That's not the insurance company's fault, nor any result of a "crisis"; this was a gamble the homeowner took on his own initiative and made the decision, perhaps because he didn't have the funds to lay out for a roof replacement at the time.

Insurance companies are not charities.  If they have actuarial data and you try to force them to do things that will lead them to take losses across their policy base they'll go out of business and if that happens when there is a large disaster there's a risk you won't get paid in full.  That's far worse than paying higher premiums and of course that risk is most-evident not an individual claim (e.g. a fire in your home caused by an electrical defect) but rather when a widespread natural disaster, such as a hurricane or wildfire, occurs in your area.

This is one of the "gotchas" with rapidly-escalating values.  People seem to think that "higher home values are good!" but higher values mean higher payouts in the event of a total loss and of course that in turn is exactly reflected in insurance premiums.  All things being equal (e.g. same risk of the bad event) if your home value doubles, and that's in the building and not the land (which isn't destroyed if there's a fire) so will your homeowner's insurance price.  Note that when it comes to floods even the raw land value factors into that issue as well because there is a possibility that the land is worth much less or even an effective zero after a flood incident because rebuilding to current elevation requirements may be difficult or impossible -- and this is one of the reasons that floods are not covered by standard homeowner policies.

Incidentally the other "gotcha" in homeowner's policies -- particularly in areas such as LA -- is known as "Law and Ordinance."  That's usually rather small and cheap but if you live in an area with an activist legislature, whether it be at the state, county or local levels having modest limits there is extremely unwise; that is the coverage that pays out if code or other legal requirements mandate different materials or standards (e.g. solar must be on the roof) when rebuilding and, of course, the insurers are not stupid so that coverage is going to be pretty expensive if you live in a residence that does not already have these "newer" requirements and they get passed into law by your state or other officials.