managing the forests to reduce wildfires >
Notice that you said "Green trees don't easily burn." Coastal California has two seasons: green and brown. Brown is in the summer. Green is in the winer. Normally it rains in LA during December and January. It didn't rain this year, so brown continued.
Most of the fires aren't in what you'd think of as forests. It's chaparral. Low scrub, bushes, and grasses. It is mostly what you'd refer to as underbrush. The only way to "thin it out" would be to remove all the vegetation. This environment has evolved to periodically burn.
> Trees have evolved to survive fires as well.
Trees have two broad strategies for surviving fires. One is to resist fire. The quintessential example is a redwood. The other is to burn and regrow faster than anything else. The quintessential example is a blue gum. Eucalypts evolved to literally explode when they burn. The environment in The Palisades is much closer to the second than the first.
This environment is, by its nature, an environment that burns. Yes, we've needed to allow more frequent burning. Environmentalists have been arguing this for decades. The difficulties with these conversations in the US is the Republican party's actual definition of "thinning the underbrush" doesn't mean controlled burns. It means clearcutting forests.
> These fires are HOT and don't just catch houses on fire with little embers.
Yes, in fact they do spread by embers. This is why the fires jump several streets at a time. The wind blows embers, and those embers ignite further buildings before the fire front even reaches them. This is one reason why it is so hard to set up fire breaks during a high winds.
> The houses could be made fire-resistant, but making houses to be fire-resistant is going to be more expensive
Here's an example things that you can do to increase the fire survivability of your home: https://flash.org/mitigation/protect-your-eaves-soffits-vent...
> and storing more water
LA had plenty of water. It didn't have enough water pressure.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/08/los-angeles-...