Her place was one of the thousands burned down a year ago in the Palisades Fire in Los Angeles. Other relatives living in Altadena had to flee the Eaton Fire at about the same time, although their home was not damaged. Likewise, the childhood home of my wife's cousins was also consumed in that same fire.

Our relatives were just a few people affected by these two fires, which together destroyed almost 17,000 homes. In a place known historically for wildfires, this was almost unprecedented in its destruction, yet both fires could have been prevented had people in authority simply cared to act. Unfortunately, California governance once again has caught the people of LA both coming and going, as the cause of the Palisades Fire was due to deliberate decisions by authorities to protect so-called endangered plants instead of the residents of the city. After the fires, government officials have made it nearly impossible for people to rebuild.

The Eaton Fire came about because of the failure of Pacific Gas & Electric—a government-protected monopoly—to cut power to its lines while the infamous Santa Ana Winds blew like clockwork westward from the Mojave Desert. As for the Palisades Fire, the authorities have even fewer excuses, as the fire broke out from an earlier fire set by an arsonist in a nearby state park, a fire that firefighters were forbidden to completely put out because doing so might harm some state-identified "endangered plants." Shawn Regan writes:

Not only was the Palisades Fire entirely preventable, the evidence suggests; it was also fueled by California state policies that, in the words of one attorney representing fire victims, "put plants over people."