This is, arguably, a new kind of fire. Farmhouses and frontier towns burned often during settlement, caught up in the general havoc of logging's slash and promiscuous burning. The intermix fire has reversed this sequence. It burns not because the forest is being cleared, but because it is returning. Untended, fuel piles up like oily rags until one hot day fire sweeps through houses and woods with the same indifferent surge.
Few landscapes tolerate a fire vacuum.
The intermix scene is no exception. Leave those fuels untreated, and wildfire will move in like weeds taking over an abandoned lot. Significantly, lightning kindled fires in every Florida county during this year's outbreak. The state was very likely experiencing a fire famine and a fuel glut. The Florida fires demonstrated convincingly the limits to fire suppression.