Judging by her article, she's never seen any. Three years ago I worked with crews in Wyoming teaching people to do exactly what's now law in California. When finished, most of the houses had beautiful, fire-resistant vegetation around them.

She claims: "Homeowners may look up from their chain saw work and think, the groves of native oaks, the masses of blue-flowered ceanothus, the sage-scented air—weren't these a big part of why we wanted to live here?"

Were they? You can have desert weather, or beautiful lush vegetation, but you can't have both. California is right on the front line, discovering the consequences of that kind of irresponsible behavior. Your house burned down? Big deal. What I was trying to help prevent in Wyoming was the deaths of firefighters - who most often die stuck in situations caused by irresponsible homeowners who refuse to landscape responsibly. Why should they risk their lives so you can have blue-flowered ceanothus and sage-scented air?

First, the parts of Southern California being talked about do not have desert vegetation, the sort of mediterranean chapparal is fundamentally different from that of either deserts or the High Plains or Rockies. All the trees that are most forbidden are the kind of native plants, or plants like eucalyptus from exactly the same sort of chapparal, that define coastal California's landscape. Also in an environment like Cali erosion is a much more severe problem than in the Rockies, the terrain of hillsides because of Cali's location on the edge of the North American craton is very young and very unstable, the only thing holding it together is the vegetation. Clearing all this vegetation may reduce fore risks but the side of the mountain coming down is even more destructive, and unlike fire completely irreversible.

I really understand where you are coming from, and personally I feel that much of the SoCal Suburbia that tries to live in natureis hopeless, but the conditions in Wyoming and in Mediterranean coastal California are really different.