The point about managing when fires happen is a good one. Reducing fire overlaps frees up resources.
Still I don't see public responsibility for people who buy homes in fire-prone areas; that should be a private cost (insurance).
Still I don't see public responsibility for people who buy homes in fire-prone areas; that should be a private cost (insurance).
FEMA bails out people who built in risky storm and flood zones like New Orleans. At the very least, I feel FEMA should be a one-time thing, if you insist on rebuilding in the same place, the government shouldn't be there for you again next flood.
Given that most buildings are built for 30-40 year spans, forcibly rebuilding once per century can be done economically.
The problems arise when hundred year floods become 10-30 year floods.
If someone wants to build on a volcano let them, and let them pay for it.
At what point can the "if someone wants to build on California, just let them" be squared away against the inevitable humanitarian disaster of thousands of displaced families in our hypothetical location?
At what point does the government step in and say: we'll the first guy was dumb, but we let him do it, then other followed and now we have thousands and thousands and can't ignore it anymore.
An interesting related example is Federal Deposit Insurance. The Great Depression made clear to the Federal government that deposits had to be insured against bank failure or nobody would ever trust banks to hold savings again and the banking system would never recover. So it introduced a mandatory insurance system that all banks would pay into to insure the deposits of any bank that failed.
If your home is not insured (with a private insurer) the government says they will not help you financially after an earthquake.
California could do the same, but I suspect there would be protests from people living in low fire zones, while here in NZ pretty much everywhere is at risk of earthquakes.