Planned burns are a thing here in Australia. It has turned into a bit of a populist talking point amongst certain people. The truth is that the time window to safely do burns in winter has sort of disappeared. Plus these fires have been intense enough to jump through places that have been burnt. As anecdata, I grew up in Southern Australia and little bushfires were common every summer. Occasionally a big one. I've moved to south east Queensland and never really seen any significant bushfires in the past decade (if I did it was government doing a planned burn in a national park). It is sub tropical, usually pretty wet in summer (sometimes with a drought, but usually much, much wetter than say east coast of tasmania). These last few years are different. The national parks I go to for walks are super dry. Creeks are dried up that are usually running. I had that scary feeling I had from my youth of smelling smoke on a hike and worrying about fire. It isn't something I have had for a long time.