The fact that people can go build a house in the middle of bush that's renowned, sometimes even evolved for, for fire, strikes me as nuts.

Especially when volunteer firefighters then have to risk their lives to save people with the lovely view. (Ditto California...)

I don’t know anyone working on wildfires in the United States for free. Not saying there is no risk, but they are paid and understand the risks. Some nice neighbors have their own contract fire crews, which are not cheap.

In Australia, "most" rural firefighters are volunteers, but have equipment and training providing by their local Government run rural fireservice (that has fulltime paid administrators).

The population density between Australia and the US is radically different though which changes the dynamic (deserts and marginal land exist in both, but Australia is particularly water challenged with no high mountains, so no major rivers).

I know folks that are volunteer wildfire firefighters in Colorado and in California they were enlisting prisoners and paying them very low wages.

Fun fact, NZ and Australian volunteer rural fire-fighters often fly in to help out with bad fire seasons in California. It's good practice.

this happened with some East Coast settlers moving to California after 1870 or so.. many areas known for fire now were the sites of fine home building with expensive techniques and materials, plus the lower quality homes or whatever. English speaking people apparently did not get the memo?

Even so, we lose plenty of houses because people want to live ‘out in the bush’ but don’t want to do all of these things.

Oh its certainly not foolproof, but better than what we usually do here in the states.

Yeah, hopefully the forestry people over there realise that hazard reduction burns aren’t optional if you’re gonna build houses in the forest and then expect it to not burn down.