>Fires have health and economic impacts on people who aren't in immediate danger of being burned to death and the only way to minimize these impacts to reduce the number of fires.
Reducing the number of fires isn't really a viable strategy; the flammable material just accumulates more and more. California has always had wildfires, they're just a part of the ecosystem. A lot has been written lately about how the strategy of trying to suppress every fire the last century is a big part of why we have so many giant, out-of-control wildfires now.
California does not do fire management properly. It's old info, just not applied because tourist boards complain about the controlled burns.
Can one ballpark how many million acres must burn on average to reach steady state given the transformation of sunlight into captured energy via photosynthesis on the impacted areas? Can we say that a noble management goal is for precisely that amount to burn every calendar year? This feels like a simple control volume analysis.
We need to increase, not reduce the number of fires. But the fires should be frequent, small controlled burns to reduce the fuel. We'll just have to accept poor air quality in those areas on some days.
Keeping people out of harm's way is a necessary, but not sufficient, step to manage California's fire problem.
Fires have health and economic impacts on people who aren't in immediate danger of being burned to death and the only way to minimize these impacts to reduce the number of fires.