Basically for an event that occurs maybe once in 50 or so years, it's hard to justify the cost of widening it when it would otherwise receive so little traffic.
Personally, from what I've learned as a layman due to all of these news stories, it should at least be prudent (and feasible) to do controlled burns during the wet season around these types of towns to get rid of some of the dry vegetation.
Other than that, 'clear-cutting' about 30'/10m from houses would probably help a lot as well:
For the road component, this was mentioned in the PBS Frontline episode "Fire in Paradise" about the Camp Fire:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3OX1PR2SCM
Basically for an event that occurs maybe once in 50 or so years, it's hard to justify the cost of widening it when it would otherwise receive so little traffic.
Personally, from what I've learned as a layman due to all of these news stories, it should at least be prudent (and feasible) to do controlled burns during the wet season around these types of towns to get rid of some of the dry vegetation.
Other than that, 'clear-cutting' about 30'/10m from houses would probably help a lot as well:
* https://www.nfpa.org/Public-Education/Fire-causes-and-risks/...