[nxc18]

This reads like a hit piece.

There was a pandemic. Rightly or wrongly, basically everything slowed to a halt. If you look carefully at the timeline, there was a pandemic slowdown, activity resumed when it was clear finances weren’t actually in peril as predicted, and the state got back on track.

Regardless, everyone is quick to point fingers about these fires, but the fact of the matter is people are putting houses in high risk areas on the wildland-urban interface. The state can’t realistically be expected to prevent that, and shouldn’t be using politics (e.g. preventing insurers from dropping risky clients) to encourage it.

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/09/12/why-is-californ...