Commentary: Can California embrace fire?

In 1982, my mother and I watched a wind-driven wall of flames descend a Malibu hillside toward our rented bungalow. Lucky for us, firefighters stopped the flames at the far edge of the asphalt road, just yards away. I've since seen that same hillside burn four times. My childhood home in Santa Barbara, perched atop the foothills of the Santa Ynez Mountains with jaw-dropping views of the Channel Islands, burned to the ground in 1991, along with its entire neighborhood. In 2007, my stepfather's house in Malibu was incinerated by a brush fire fanned like a flamethrower by fierce Santa