That’s like saying death is natural and would occur any way, so there shouldn’t be liability if one human causes another human’s death.

Sure forest fires may have occurred anyway but if someone started it either intentionally or negligently, well they should be liable for at least some of the damages.

The difficulty people have in understanding that these fires are inevitable is why they won't stop anytime soon. People will die because of our collective inability to accept the ecology of the region.

It's more like there's a crowded place with a gun pointed at the middle of the crowd. Every 30m the gun is cocked. 1-10m after that based on a random timer, it fires.

If someone trips and accidentally pulls the trigger after 32m in are they liable? Maybe, but only in the smallest way. The actual problem is the gun or the people walking in front of it.

It's wrong to use the word "may" for these fires. These areas have evolved to burn and will do so unless we shrink wrap each plant.

Humans put the gun there, we started burning which gave rise to an ecosystem that thrived on burning and encouraged more. Then, we settled that area en masse.

Whether or not a fire is inevitable has nothing to do with liability for starting a fire.

If a poorly maintained utility truck didn’t start the fire...maybe eventually there would have been controlled burns/fires that ultimately prevented the damages that resulted from this fire. Or maybe, as you say the forest inevitably catches on fire from a natural act (act of god - a legal term of art) and forest fire burns in a less populated area and no damage is caused to people/homes...or maybe lightning starts the same fire in the same location and causes the same damages, well even then insurance exists to cover that, but otherwise there wouldn’t be liability the same as someone negligently/intentionally setting the fire.

Fires can legally be acts of god, same as the law might treat a hurricane or tornado...but unlike the later humans can’t (at least not yet) cause them intentionally or negligently, obviously fires are different as they canso liability (criminal and/or civil) is appropriate for fires started intentionally or negligently.

What if that person trips because they left all kinds of crap on the floor where they needed to walk?

If the "accident" could have been averted by making a reasonable effort to maintain equipment and the surrounding area, then it seems like there should be some liability. Whether that is the case, I don't know.

If you lean against a wall and the wall falls over (killing people), are you liable?

Maybe. Depends on the facts (what you provided are not exactly facts, just a fact) and the claim for liability.

Questions/issues include:

1. Did you build the wall? Were you negligent in building the wall? Did you breach some professional/industry standard?

2. Did you intend to knock the wall down? Were you negligent in knocking the wall down? Did you know or should you have known if you lean against the wall it will fall?

There are an infinite number of facts one could make up that might change the claim and outcome of liability (also note This is generally about civil liability, but it could possibly extend to criminal liability when talking about death).

There is a pretty famous liability case all Law school students come across early in their torts class, as I recall a driver’s tire blew and he lost control of the vehicle and killed someone. Are the liable? Well come to find out that yes, all drivers have a duty to other drivers to make sure their vehicle is safe for the road and in this case a “reasonable person” (another legal term of art) would have known it was not safe to drive on bald tires and the driver was negligent not maintaining their vehicle safety which was the proximate cause of the death.

> Did you know or should you have known if you lean against the wall it will fall?

That's a pretty reasonable question based on my proposed scenario. Everything else is a pretty deep stretch.

There's also the question of what is "right" versus what is lawful, which is a map versus territory situation.

Anyway, I'm sure a case can and will be built. And part of the reason will be that humans need scapegoats.

False equivalency. They are not the same.

Given it's a place where forest fires happen there should be liability for the town planners who decided to put settlements in the middle of what would inevitably one day become a firestorm, or allow existing settlements to grow.

If you designed a building in SF, you'd be expected to make it resistant to earthquakes. When it's known that a type of natural disaster is prevalent where you're building, the liability is with those that allow inappropriate building in those places.

Why not place the blame on who made the ultimatr choice to live in a place: the homeowner?

Because they don't have the power to change how houses are built.

Heh? You can absolutely decide how your house is going to be built and/or refuse to live in a house not built to your standards. Moreover, they certainly have the power to live elsewhere.

Maybe in a magical world where everybody has a great job and plenty of money.

In the real world if an unsafe house exists there will always be someone who is desperate enough to live in it. The only way to stop it is to ban the house, not to rely on market forces.

That's why we have building regulations.

I mean this is obvious really. Suppose there's a house that is cheap and huge and in an amazing location but its wiring isn't up to code and the stairs are steeper than building regs allow. Do you really think nobody would rent it?

Right now I’m talking about property damage, not safety. I would absolutely say that a homeowner who knowingly takes the risk to buy a house with shoddy wiring should bear the risk of that choice (as opposed to the state).

Completely agree. 'Climate change' is just something thrown around now for people and their political units to abdicate responsibility for their own actions. 'Climate change' didn't force people to build housing in California forests and right on Florida beaches, local land-use, urban planning and transportation decisions did.

That’s not all climate change is.

Who said anything about climate change?

The governor of California. Repeatedly.

He publicly blamed the fires on climate change, not PG&E.

As if climate change has made California's forests so hot that they're spontaneously combusting.

Humans have only been around for 20,000 years or so, I imagine the forests were evolving fine before them.

You're off by at least a factor of 10 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_sapiens#Age_and_speciatio...

But the forests are in America, for which is he is ~correct. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settlement_of_the_Americas#Chr...

Ah, good point!

You drastically underestimate the rapidity of catastrophe as an evolutionary forcing function. Many or most of the trees in these areas are now not merely tolerant to, but dependent on (apparently anthropogenic) fire in order to reproduce.

The differencea is this one was probably started by power lines. Other fires were also started by campers or reckless people.

None of these situations are natural.

The limiting factor contributing to the total amount of fire is the growth of trees. Naturally it'll happen due to lightning. If that's less often than human triggers, the fires will be bigger.

That's actually not necessarily the case. By creating more fires evolutionary pressure favored plants that were designed to burn, grow fast, and leave competitive seeds.

BTW much of what burns in CA is not large trees but chapparal.

The linked articles I included have more detail.

I agree that makes sense over the long term (100+ years), assuming that natural triggers are less frequent than fires put out by people.

Please read the linked articles in my parent comment.

They are natural, because humans are natural. California's vegetation has evolved to burn and quickly regrow and easily burn again due to anthropogenic fire for thousands of years.

If it were not for human involvement CA might have more fire resistant species.