Fire here has a relentless staccato rhythm, syncopated by landslides and floods.
At least once a decade a blaze in the chaparral grows into a terrifying firestorm consuming hundreds of homes in an inexorable advance across the mountains to the sea. Ecology of Fear , Mike Davis, pp97-99. These fires are not a random event, and the potential is there for humans to play a large part in controlling them. Before settlers arrived in the area the local inhabitants regularly set fire to areas of the forest in a controlled attempt to burn away the vegetation which accumulated. This dead biomass is a vital fuel for fires and destroying it on a regular basis reduced the chance of accidental, and uncontrollable, fire breaking out.