I was a wildland fire fighter for twelve years in southern California and I can tell you it doesn't matter a tinkers dam who owns the land involved! I didn't read every word of every rambling statement of this whole thread, but I didn't see much about the real cause of the devastation. The biggest problem is the hot dry winds that we call santa ana's. The relative humidity can be in single digits for several days with winds often reaching 60-70 miles per hour. I have witnessed fires burning through pine and oak trees as fast as they would through grass and light brush. When you see something that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up you don't tend to forget it. It seems to me that this years weather pattern has moved north taking these winds away the south end of the state, sparing us for the moment.

I suppose that on Google one can find the answer one favors:

In fact, regardless that he expressed his opinion in classically inelegant Trumpian terms, the president is correct in at least this: The state of California has been doing an awful job of managing its forests.

The degree to which that mismanagement contributed to this latest round of wildfires may be called into question, but the fact of the state’s mismanagement itself is beyond doubt.

The non-partisan California Legislative Analyst’s Office released a report entitled “Improving California’s Forest and Watershed Management” in April of this year. In a related fact sheet, they recognized that “[m]ost of the forests across the state are in an unhealthy condition.” They further stated that overgrown, unhealthy forests resulted in “increased risk of severe forest fires” and recommended actions to thin California’s many overgrown, unhealthy forests that have developed in the name of environmental puritanism.

And no, this sad situation is not the federal government’s fault. While the feds own the land on which the wildfires occurred, the Bureau of Land Management delegated its authority to manage that land—and most of the rest of the federally owned forests in California—to the state’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) as part of that agency’s State Responsibility Area (SRA) a long time ago.

The fire that consumed Paradise, California, occurred in a part of Northern California within the state’s SRA, as is most of the state outside of the deserts in Southern California. Some say these fires started in the high chaparral, a bush-like vegetation that is unrelated to forestry management. Perhaps that is the case.

Whatever the facts, no one can question that the fires started in a part of the state for which California itself is wholly responsible for fire protection and that California’s irresponsible forest-management practices are sure to lead to more fires in the future. It’s just a matter of time.