[throwup238]

This was a freak event with record wind speeds so basic fire prevention couldn’t help short of bulldozing every other house in the affected neighborhoods and salting the earth. After the Camp fire and the lightning complex fires, California insurers got really serious about fire insurance inspections and mitigation. Problem is that normal mitigation like setbacks and vulcan vents don’t help when Santa Ana winds send fist sized burning embers for up to a mile in front of the fire. Only really expensive and ecologically problematic measures like external Phos-Chek sprinklers would help in that case, which is what saved a few celebrity hokes in the Palisades.

Only well funded commercial and government campuses like JPL or the Getty can afford the kind of fire suppression measures required to defend against a conflagration of this magnitude.