Here we go again.

The Southern part of California and much of the rest of the land west of the Rockies is desert -- either technically or might as well be (in other words, it comes just over said thresholds on official precipitation amounts.)  Add to this that the weather pattern in that part of the nation often produces wild-eyed winds (the gradient between the highlands and lower land, along with the ocean that is right there providing a "sink" for it) along with terrain that creates "funnel" effects multiplying windspeeds and its obvious that if anything gets lit during those high-wind periods you got problems.

As you might expect if you look around at the vegetation that does grow there you'll find fire-adapted things.  Plants that have fire-activated seed, for example.  Nature finds a way, in short, and over millions of years has done exactly that.

Then we come in, we build things in places we believe are beautiful, and are unhappy when that which has been going on for millions of years occurs again.  We claim its unfair, that something is "changing" (often at human fault) and similar.

Well, no.  We're simply in the way and it is we who have to adapt because nature will not.

The same thing is true for living along a coastline subject to hurricanes.  The hurricanes have always come.  Yes, its beautiful 99% of the time.  The other 1% of the time Mother Nature is very angry and throws a 10 or 20' high wall of water and waves driven by 120kt wind at you.  Ditto living in mountain valleys; 99% of the time its nice, the other 1% of the time snow melts more-rapidly than expected or a storm gets blown into the mountain face, the air is forced upward, it cools as that occurs (go hike in the Smokies or anywhere else and note the 10-15 degree difference -- similarly at the Grand Canyon except its even more-pronounced there) and cool air holds less moisture than warm air.  The result is torrential rain that then flows down said mountain, blowing that nice river out of its banks and triggering landslides that cannot be outrun -- you are either not there when it comes or you will be buried by it.  If you look at the topography you can see the scars where its happened before -- and will happen again.

Its just that nobody knows exactly when.

We do add to the risk of bad outcomes in some cases; if there are trees with a fall-line that reaches a powerline then high winds can and will cause the tree to fall and if it does it will hit the power line.  The benign outcome is you lose power.  The malignant one is that this comes during a windstorm when its dry rather than a hurricane or serious thunderstorm (when its very wet) and thus starts a wind-driven fire which, until the wind dies down, can be nearly-impossible to extinguish so long as there is available fuel in the path.  By the way if the wind is howling "in the path" means anything that can burn within a mile as embers will be blown that far -- or further!

We do have defensive acts we can take against some of this risk.  If you live where hurricane winds are likely you can build to code levels that can withstand the wind.  If you're where you can get surged you can elevate the structure on stilts or make the lower level(s) sacrificial with the walls designed to blow out when challenged in this way, and the living portion of the building and systems up above.  If you live where wind-driven fires can occur you can maintain a significant fuel-free zone, clad your structure in things that won't burn and not have openings into the attic and similar where blown embers can get inside (and light the attic on fire), along with putting in a significant-size cistern, run some pipe and have a fuel-powered pump for suppression while keeping the structure and roof wet (note that if you have a pool that's a pretty-large cistern, isn't it?)  As long as you can put the embers out faster than they can light your house on fire and keep doing it until the fire passes you win although the smoke damage may still be quite extreme, especially if the building is poorly-sealed.  In earthquake-prone areas you can build to seismic codes.  We can insist that power companies not allow power lines within the fall line of trees, and put in place both requirements to remove or trim said trees that encroach and pass laws that prevent private or public landowners from blocking that pruning or removal. We can remove available fuel which dramatically reduces wildfire intensity and propagation, either through control burns or simply removing it if you're in an area where burning it during periods when its safe won't work.

In addition as with Maui the LA area has a literally inexhaustible source of water suitable for fighting wildfires: The ocean!  Of course this is non-potable and not suitable for anything else, but for fire suppression -- well?  Stick fuel-powered pump-houses down near the water with fire mains of HDPE running to strategic points and... done.  But nobody did any of this, right?

None of these are proof against a bad outcome, of course, but all do help and might save property.  However, all do damage to the allure many seek; sticking your "beach house" on stilts obviously isn't at beach level anymore, maintaining a 100' perimeter of non-combustibles around your house in a dry wind-prone area is some amount of work and that cistern and fuel-operated pump (so it works if the power goes off first) costs money, as does filling it for what might wind up being a "nothing" of a fire season where it goes unused.  Keeping tree fall-lines away from power lines means cutting down or pruning trees on a regular basis proactively or putting the lines underground and that costs money too. Living in mountain valleys where you can see the flat, fertile and nice-appearing land is rather obviously there because it did flood in the past and the scour marks from previous slides are clear on the mountain when you look -- and there is no actual defense in either of those cases that matters; you're not going to stop a landslide no matter what sort of defensive engineering you apply.  Damming rivers and tributaries can provide serious defense against valley flooding if you let the agencies who propose it do so, which residents of Asheville and Buncombe and surrounding counties infamously did not in the 1960s and 70s when TVA showed up with allocated funds to do so even after the disastrous floods of 1916 and 1940 along with several lesser events.

At the end of the day life is about balancing risks, rewards and costs.  There are plenty of people around here who have built "a cabin in the woods" on or near a ridgeline.  A significant "no combustible material" setback and careful selection of materials for the exterior and sealing possible means of ember intrusion, along with a nice big fat cistern tank and fuel-driven pump and controls to keep the building and immediate surrounding area wet in the event of a fire all damage the ambience folks seek (never mind being a bit expensive) and thus it is usually not done.  That's a choice, but if a fire gets going during a dry period coming up the face of the ridge your house is sitting on there's nothing you're going to be able to do at that point except run and you better do the running before your exit paths get cut off.

There's a lot of yelling going on in WNC right now, particularly around Asheville, on flood map revisions.  They always happen after flood and other serious storm events; post Ivan they certainly did around where I lived in Florida (I rode that one out at the house and it was bad -- however my efforts were successful.)  But the federal government has no control over whether you can rebuild -- that's under State, County and local control.  What FEMA and thus NFIP do have control over is whether you can obtain government-sponsored flood insurance and, if so, at what price depending on what you do when you rebuild.  We should remember that the entire River Arts district in Asheville was so reasonable in cost for people to come in and "redevelop" not that long ago specifically because the prior users of that land, which were industrial, left after the previous flooding destroyed their investments.  Everyone who built there knew this so what's the problem -- you made a decision having either known or you could have trivially determined said history and yet people built there anyway!

The same is true out in Southern California.  Fires aren't new there and the Santa Ana winds are an annual phenomena that have occurred long before the California Gold Rush brought a large influx of humans.  No, humans are not making it worse but we are putting more and more "stuff" of ever-increasing value in the way that can be destroyed.  Couple high wind with dry conditions, given that part of the country is borderline desert, and you've got a high-risk environment with vegetation which reflects that and in some cases actually requires fire to propagate!  Add to that state government policies that do not clear brush (on purpose!) and in other areas do not conduct control burns during the part of the year when high winds do not occur and you've got the natural environment and its oscillations -- including much larger fires simply because there's more fuel available and you refused to reduce said fuel load despite having the opportunity to do so in advance.  Now add deliberate refusal to build out fire-suppression infrastructure (in this case California residents approved a bond issue many years ago to do exactly that but it wasn't done!) and you have all the ingredients for what is now occurring.  If you want to know why insurance companies left they asked for rates that reflected this deliberate neglect and foolish set of decisions by said government agencies and, when you get down to it, the people who live there and kept voting those government agents into office.  The firms had already taken large fire losses as a result and thus they had no evidence any of that would change.  The rate adjustments were refused and thus their only sane option was to withdraw offering coverage and leave.

It sucks for those caught in the middle of it, of course, but as someone who lived in a hurricane zone on the water for 20 years they as I knew the risk, they and I all selected our precise piece of property to own and live in with our own evaluation of said risk or willful blindness toward it along with the expected rewards from doing so, we engaged in (or not) the mitigations we believed made sense on a cost:risk:reward basis and that, as a free person in a free nation, was and is my and their right to do.

But having done so the consequences were both mine and now theirs as well, whether for good or bad.

We're not going to change the natural world; it is we who, through technology, adapt to it and not the other way around.

The remaining question is whether those impacted will force those who had responsibility for said mitigations, in many cases explicitly funded with tax dollars yet they did not act in accordance with their responsibilities and either did nothing or spent the funds elsewhere, to be held personally responsible for any and all of their malfeasance.

There appears to be plenty of that to go around.