It was arson 100 percent..
??????
Notwithstanding your ability to prove a hypothesis thousands of miles away, I would respectfully submit as I wrote above that those are extremely high winds at the start of these fires which were separated by some distance. It’s at least worth considering and the #2 most lethal fire, the Camp Fire, started the same way along with other starts in the same area due to high winds and power lines.
Three years ago we lost a small town with less wind than this after a tree top split and blew over the lines severing them.
If I owned a utility I would publicize that my plan would be to cut power when fire conditions are this bad with high winds. Just my .02 but somebody will always be unhappy.
I’m in the mid-south USA and locally the utility companies do a pretty good job of clearing a wide swath around high voltage lines. Feeders to homes, not so much, if they are not told about them. A disadvantage of no human meter readers anymore, I suppose.
I just took down a walnut beginning to threaten the feed to our house — normally our power company will do it at no charge if you advise them of a tree hazardous to their lines, but they’d have come in and torn up the lawn (unusually high soil moisture this summer).
Kinda hated to lose the shade, but hate even more to lose power at a bad time! Dad was a Forester and taught me pretty well on taking down trees in tricky spots, which this also was. No worries, except for a second or so as the tree started to go!