A useful alternative would be the Longreads article from 2018, discussing the history of the region that burned and how it was known to be a fire danger from the beginning (and has burned every so often as predicted):
> The 1930 Decker Canyon fire was a worst-case scenario involving 50-year-old chaparral and a fierce Santa Ana. Faced with a five-mile front of towering flames
> Despite a further series of fires in 1935, 1936, and 1938 which destroyed almost four hundred homes in Malibu and Topanga Canyon, public officials stubbornly disregarded
> He also provided a classic account of the onslaught of the terrible firestorm of Christmas week 1956, which, burning its way to the sea, retraced the path of the 1930 blaze.
And identifies that the policy of colonizing wildfire-prone zones with single family homes was set in the late 50s:
> By declaring Malibu a federal disaster area and offering blaze victims tax relief as well as preferential low-interest loans, the Eisenhower administration established a precedent for the public subsidization of firebelt suburbs.
Fires continued, of course, like clockwork:
> The next firestorm, in late September 1970, coupled perfect fire weather (drought conditions, 100-degree heat, 3 percent humidity, and an 85-mile-per-hour Santa Ana wind) with a bumper crop of combustible wood-frame houses. According to firefighters, the popular cedar shake roofs “popped like popcorn” as a 20-mile wall of flames roared across the ridgeline of the Santa Monicas toward the sea
And so on. So I wouldn’t say it’s “too early” for political takes on reconstruction; this debate — Oh No Fires! What Next For Zoning? — has been going on for almost one hundred years, even if it’s news to the current decade that this was ever a risk.
https://longreads.com/2018/12/04/the-case-for-letting-malibu...
> The 1930 Decker Canyon fire was a worst-case scenario involving 50-year-old chaparral and a fierce Santa Ana. Faced with a five-mile front of towering flames
> Despite a further series of fires in 1935, 1936, and 1938 which destroyed almost four hundred homes in Malibu and Topanga Canyon, public officials stubbornly disregarded
> He also provided a classic account of the onslaught of the terrible firestorm of Christmas week 1956, which, burning its way to the sea, retraced the path of the 1930 blaze.
And identifies that the policy of colonizing wildfire-prone zones with single family homes was set in the late 50s:
> By declaring Malibu a federal disaster area and offering blaze victims tax relief as well as preferential low-interest loans, the Eisenhower administration established a precedent for the public subsidization of firebelt suburbs.
Fires continued, of course, like clockwork:
> The next firestorm, in late September 1970, coupled perfect fire weather (drought conditions, 100-degree heat, 3 percent humidity, and an 85-mile-per-hour Santa Ana wind) with a bumper crop of combustible wood-frame houses. According to firefighters, the popular cedar shake roofs “popped like popcorn” as a 20-mile wall of flames roared across the ridgeline of the Santa Monicas toward the sea
And so on. So I wouldn’t say it’s “too early” for political takes on reconstruction; this debate — Oh No Fires! What Next For Zoning? — has been going on for almost one hundred years, even if it’s news to the current decade that this was ever a risk.