Column: California's cycle of fiery destruction and reconstruction is older than you might think

For the first time in memory, everyone around here either knows someone or is someone who has lost a home or been dislocated by the fires that have scarred so much of our beloved Los Angeles.

So many factors helped make our current natural disaster one of the largest in American history: a warming planet, an extremely dry season that followed an extremely wet one, unusually brutish Santa Ana winds, extensive development in places known to catch fire cyclically.

In California, the supposedly unthinkable keeps happening. We have wet falls and winters, followed by hot, dry summers that suck the moisture from the chaparral, which becomes kindling for the fires.

Read at Los Angeles Times