Climate change is absolutely exacerbating these conditions, just as climate change in the past exacerbated these conditions. The climate is not regular in the absence of modern human activity. The timing and amount of rainfall have varied throughout history.
These dry conditions are not abnormal when looking at any longer timeframes. The severity of the fires is abnormal, but only because both humans and nature were regularly setting fires and letting them burn until they burnt out for many, many thousands of years. Only recently did mankind intervene in the natural ecology by stopping fires.
> People expect fires near their homes to be suppressed.
Then they will have to readjust their expectations. I would also say they should pay attention to the Cal Fire messaging about the necessity of fires. ( http://www.calfire.ca.gov/communications/downloads/live_w_fi... )In the rest of the country, we have prescribed fires even in and near residential areas. Clearly they must be managed more carefully now that Californians have allowed the situation to get so bad (e.g., fires started in wetter conditions which won't burn enough, followed by a second fire in drier conditions), but they are the only thing short of everyone leaving that can resolve the situation.
I'm not sure why Californians believe they are special and different. People in this thread keep citing terrain (mountainous areas are burned in the rest of the country), wind (the highest-wind states are actually those with the most controlled burns according to the wind map posted and the forestry website I linked), dryness (not out of historical norms, just recent history.)
Human-driven climate change is a factor, but what we're seeing is Californian climate returning to recent (in a relative sense) historical norms, not some kind of incipient Armageddon. We're not seeing something that's never been seen before. Again, the entirely dominant factor is the insufficient amount of prescribed burns.
Regardless of the cause, the only long-term solution is more controlled burns. The climate is going to get drier and hotter. Fires will happen. There is absolutely nothing you can do to prevent this. Even if you waved a magic wand and took fire away from mankind, fires still occur naturally. The longer you wait, the more dry fuel you accumulate and the worse the fires will be. It might hurt in the short term, some houses may indeed be destroyed in controlled burns (it happens elsewhere, too), but the alternative is more houses burned and more ecological destruction and more people dead. You cannot get around this.