The destruction in LA is bad, but in November 2018, 18,804 structures burned in Paradise (CA).
On 8 October 1881, a series of fires in Michigan, Wisconsin and Chicago burned nearly 10,000,000 sq. km. and killed at least 3,000 people; entire towns burned up.
My point is: yes this is a big deal, but worse has happened. I appreciate the point that climate change is increasing the odds of major fires that burn at least 10,000 structures. The series {1881, 2018, 2025} makes me wonder if any of our homes will be around by the end of next year!
Some ancient structures are still standing, but most homes and buildings do not. Yet, people survive and civilization moves on. Lessons learned will be important going forward, lest we repeat the past.
Changing climatic conditions is a surprisingly common factor in collapsed societies throughout history... so it isnt true that civilizations survive and move on, they tend to die when climate alters beyond the norms in the region it occupies.
We are not learning the lessons at all because we arent adapting to the climate change event that we can stop if we decided to, lessons learned would be to listen to the experts on climate and take it seriously because science has proven itself to prevent disasters before (ozone hole, vaccines, and so on).
And given the fact that we have what we have now because the global climate has been unusually stable for 12,000 years, the change that is happening is almost certainly going to remove our global civilization.
Fires in LA is one small part but this isnt the first time LA has burned yet it keeps happening... where are the lessons learned?
Hurricanes on the US East Coast are a problem already.
Other countries, like India, has serious problems with clean water and it will worsen as the glaciers disappear. That is 1 billion people without enough water... that wont stay in India. Why havent we learned the lesson that clean water is rare and needs to be treated in the manner it deserves?
The US is guilty of destroying its fresh water supplies or simply pumping out faster than it can be replaced.
We are not learning the lessons at all, and the few we do take notice of and act on are mostly a bandaid on the problem and not a solution for the cause.
If LA wants to truly fix the fire problem one of the first steps is changing the agriculture in the State, to resource measures to guide fires that are based on science and not what they are doing, they would be world leaders in removing all fossil fuels from everything in the State and be a vocal advocate for fighting climate change.
Lessons learned... yeah, nah.