In the Ashes, Californians Ask How to Defeat the Santa Anas

EVERY devastating fire in Southern California is followed by a period of taking stock: how can the fast-growing exurbs that ring Los Angeles and San Diego protect themselves from the inevitable next big blaze?

Last week, the tension between growth and safety arose again as people in the region began to assess the damage from wildfires that have so far consumed nearly half a million acres, killed seven people, and burned almost 1,800 structures to the ground.

If fire danger was enough to stop development, much of the populated part of California would never have been inhabited. The early Indian tribes understood the threat, and periodically burned meadows and forests to reduce the underbrush, which would otherwise fuel more dangerous firestorms.

Despite the dangers of living in a fire-prone arid basin, developers and home buyers have rarely been deterred, and they are not likely to be in the future, even with the state’s well-organized antigrowth forces. California is expected to absorb 17 million more people in the next four decades.

The key, then, is to find the always elusive balance between hellbent growth and no growth. Even Joel Kotkin, the author of “The New Geography” and an admirer of the economic dynamism of the exurbs, sees the need for limits. “You need to have respect for what nature can do, and then you adjust,” he said. “There certainly needs to be an assessment as to whether in some areas the danger is so great that we may consider not building in that particular place.”

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