Kind of a catch-22. The more prescribed burns we do the less likely it'll be that they get out of hand. Both because of less fuel out there in general and because of more experience managing these.

Also if there was an easy way to quantify how much damage controlled burns have prevented vs the amount of damaged done by escaped burns like this I think we'd still find a net benefit

Lastly, I'd like to point out the difference between cultural burn practices and the controlled burns often practiced by firefighting agencies. The former are much smaller, cooler, and slower burns whereas the latter tend to follow specific lines and cover larger distances