My comment was based on the claim by some that our forests are not healthy unless managed by man.
As for cities, I think it’s a better goal to manage them so that when the inevitable fires do come, they can be relatively immune to the negative affects of the fires.
When I hear of 500 homes in a community going up in smoke, it just occurs to me that steps in good planning had to have been overlooked.
Forests will be forests, and fires will be fires, but must we give them so much help in destroying us?
People move into some of these areas because of the beautiful trees. Then a forest fire comes long and those trees burn right up to the house, and the house is not able to stand up to temperatures in excess of one thousand degrees, and they combust.
Then there’s the problem of embers floating in on roofs that were not made out of the right materials.
There must be dozens of good ideas that could be implemented to stop homes from bursting into flames and chaining across a region to burn so many homes.
1. How about thermal barriers that could be raised to deflect massive heat away from the home, so it would’t combust?
2. How about incorporating swimming pool water in a system that uses the water there to dowse fires or prevent them from starting?
3. How about using natural berms to prevent heat from the most vulnerable direction?
4. How about homes that are partially subterranean, so that only a small percentage of it would have to be protected against the threat of a fire? Keep the best views in front of the part that is exposed, for enjoyment. Then have a barrier ready to protect that one small part of the home during a threat.
Some of these things could be a plus in other ways too, such as the subterranean home and the near constant temperatures year around, thus reducing heating and cooling costs.
The forests were logged previously. Then allowed to go fallow. the natural progression of fire was also tampered with resulting in extremely high fuel loads. We also have invasive species (bark beetles) imported from abroad (an unfortunate fact of modern life) killing trees and adding to the high fuel loads.
The forests in and around modern life will not manage themselves, just as wildlife populations will not manage themselves. You and I would both like to live in a more naturally managed state (small s) but that is not reality. You seem to have an overly simplistic outlook on how you would like things to be, I would like that too but it is just not reality.