I was shocked to see the aerial views of the burned-out areas. my armed-patrol company has (had) clients in many of the neighborhoods esp in Pasadena/Altadena and virtually all of them (with just a few exceptions) have been totally annihilated. I could drive east from the 210 Freeway on any of three large side-streets and every single one of the corridors through that part of the city are destroyed. 

The tragic part is that so many are old homes built in a bygone era which can never be replaced  - their rustic charms are history now gone forever. 

It's a little shocking to me that there was (is) no contingency plan for stopping a thing like this from wiping out whole swaths of residential areas. 

Bucky Fuller suggested long ago that huge floating lakes could be suspended in the air with millions of gallons of water by massive inflated structures (stadium-sized balloons) for fighting big fires. 

Such floating lakes would not be cheap, but mebbe they'd be worth it when compared to what Lost Angeles has gone through. Of course, creating such a thing would take planning, imagination and dedication from public officials - which means it's impossible. Public officials rarely plan for the future more than through the end of their own career. 

Multi-generational project such as Fuller envisioned cannot be achieved because our "leaders" lead nowhere. 

For information about the science involved in raising a million-ton structure to float in the air there are websites devoted to Fuller's ideas.