I may be wrong as I haven't read closely, but I don't believe anyone is surprised by these fires. Growing up in the area, fire burned those same areas more than once during my school years. It's chaparral and it is supposed to burn every 10 years or so. But like anytime else it's a big deal when it hits your (or a celebrity) neighborhood vs a couple miles away, and the biggest difference is over the last few decades is that they keep building higher and higher into the mountain, so what used to just be a wildfire is now a neighborhood burning down.
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Not just "a neighborhod" but several including predominently black neighborhoods as the article points out. This is far from a natural disaster and many are actively trying to claim it is. Indigenous peoples performed controlled burns that prevented this prior to colonization. The article is very brief but points this out. It's an entire ecosystem impacted not just celebrities and Octavia Butler made some predictions that were frighteningly astute without trying to say that we are doomed to repeat this.
Ok, thanks for the added context. My point is the same things were said about the Altadena fire when I was in high school nearby, the same year as her first Parable book was published. Fire was not new to the area then, either.
I hear you. That regional history must have been part of Butler's inspiration or at least influenced it. I'm not as familiar with the geography of the area as I live in the Northeast so I appreciate your perspective. It seems as though many people saw this as inevitable and it's a tragic wake up call for others who ignored history. Thanks for sharing the link.
So, now we ignore science, gaslight, and pretend everything is fine. /s