Sure, you can have grasses build up, but a couple years of grass growth isn't going to lead to crown fires destroying the entire forest. It'll rip along the ground, kill the weak trees, clear the ground, etc.

Grass fires also don't tend to toss much in the way of firebrands - it's direct flame spread along the ground, and that's a lot easier to block/protect a property from than the flying ember variety of ignition sources. I keep a 15-20' bare dirt firebreak around our property because the hill burns every few years. A grass fire isn't going to cross that, even in the wind. If it does, it's in a few spots that are easy to keep up with - it's not a large flame front.

I do keep the discs on the tractor now, though, all summer unless I'm actively using something else. Much as I hate "start, pin the governor wide open, roll" style startups on the tractor, I'll do it if there's a fire and I can go get ahead of the fire line or extinguish chunks of it.

We also keep a pickup around the hill with a couple hundred gallons of water and a fire pump in the back, for similar reasons. Local fire service is good, but it's better to be able to deter and redirect things on your own - and against burning grass, you can easily do that.

The underlying problem is building permanent housing in areas that historically burn perennially. Outside of that, it's management that is needed to ensure fires are manageable enough where property can be protected. A grass and weed fire burns out much faster and is much less intense than one where there are dead trees and logs and a significant amount of larger dead accumulated brush that need much more time to burn to ash, and produce a lot more heat. The grass and native chapparel fires hardly seem to last a few days when they happen in southern california in areas that have recently burned. Whenever you see a long winded fire roasting away, like the one that threatened Mt. Wilson Observatory last year, you will inevitably also read something like "The last time this forest burned was in a fire that was fought 60 years ago."

> doesn't solve the problem on its own.

Nothing will completely solve the problem, but controlled burns do considerably cut down on the total area burned.[1]

1: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237866254_Effective...