You miss the important — critical, in fact — point that rural areas do not NEED regular wildfires to maintain a healthy ecosystem IF — and this is the “IF” that has just burned hunderds of people out of house and home — property owners have the freedom to clear deadwood and underbrush themselves.
When human property owners undertake to do the things that nature would otherwise use fire to do, then those fires are no longer necessary to the maintenace of a healthy forest. But environmentalists don’t WANT the humans to do the things that nature uses fire to do, because they worship nature and believe that, if the humans do the things that nature uses fire to do, that would be bad because it would be humans doing those things, not nature. They believe, in fact, that ONLY fire can do the things that nature uses fire to do, and that humans doing those things is discordant with nature, and insufficient to the achievement of the Utopian world they believe could exist if we always just sat back and let nature take its course. In this way, they believe, we will all achieve Nirvana.
The sane among us, however, have heard about Nirvana, and readily recognize it by it’s more common name: Hell.
If it’s your property you should be able to take care of it so these things WON’T happen. There are plenty of people who know how to care for their land in California so wildfires won’t destroy it.