[bcrosby95]

I live in SoCal and the park backing up my house has giant piles of dead wood everywhere. It basically looks like your picture but everything is brown and 1/3 of the fuel is dead trees. The Woolsey fire went right around our city - mountains on 3 sides of it, and all 3 of them were on fire at one point.

Been thinking of trying to organize something to clear out some of that crap. I know our neighbors take it upon themselves to cut park trees that encroach on their properties.

[zbrozek]

The area in that photo turns brown in the fall. It's a few hundred feet from my house. I moved into my place late in 2019. Spring 2020 was creating a defensible space around the house - trimming trees, removing ground cover ivy near the house, etc. This spring is more about clearing the brush and trying to disconnect the ground from the canopy on the whole parcel. Some folks walking through the neighborhood called the town to complain that I was removing native plants. Town came by and ultimately decided I was within my right to clean up, but it was a hassle I didn't need.

Given the close calls I'm really surprised that there isn't a strong rallying around removing fuel.