Ok, thanks for the added context. My point is the same things were said about the Altadena fire when I was in high school nearby, the same year as her first Parable book was published. Fire was not new to the area then, either.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinneloa_Fire

I may be wrong as I haven’t read closely, but I don’t believe anyone is surprised by these fires. Growing up in the area, fire burned those same areas more than once during my school years. It’s chaparral and it is supposed to burn every 10 years or so. But like anytime else it’s a big deal when it hits your (or a celebrity) neighborhood vs a couple miles away, and the biggest difference is over the last few decades is that they keep building higher and higher into the mountain, so what used to just be a wildfire is now a neighborhood burning down.