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I've read through this thread and learned some things. Thanks to all for posting and sharing what you know about this tragedy.
One of the topics discussed revolves around "why live in an area where there such risk?" or "why rebuild knowing the risk is still there?". I hesitate to jump into this already dynamic conversation, but I sort of can't help myself.
First, my sympathy goes to those directly affected by the fire who lost homes, family treasures, and in a few cases, their lives. This was a tragedy of epic proportion.
Next, I won't comment on who's to blame or lack of preparedness, or try to politicize this in any way. There is already a lot of discussion and I am certain that I couldn't add any value.
I only want to address topic about why do people live in fire disaster-prone Southern California and rebuild there even after a disaster. For those who live out of state, I can imagine such a question being asked. As tragic as this fire was, if you look at the numbers, a very small percentage of Southern Californians were directly impacted by this fire. This point is simply about the probability of this disaster happening a given Southern California resident. There's probably not a single community that is immune from fire danger. By the numbers, Southern California has 25 million population and the 11th largest GDP in the world if were it's own country. For sake of probability only and NOT diminishing the impact on those directly affected, only 170,000 out of 25,000,000 were evacuated or 0.68%. The percentage of those who evacuated who actually lost their home is far less and the number is probably not known at this time. The news reports made some people believe that the entire state was on fire. I had family from Switzerland contact me to ask if were were okay and we are 400 miles from the fire!
So, addressing only the question about why do people live there if it's so prone to fire? 99%+ were not affected and it's home to them. I think that's why. I'm sure some who lost their home will decide to move somewhere else, but for many people, including me when I lived there, Southern California is an amazing place to live and would rebuild in a heartbeat if able as opposed to moving out of state.
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