This is kind of a weird op-ed. It frames this as though the costs are all red marker, but the costs of rebuilding include labor and materials and help to reinvigorate local economies. I'm sure there is a net cost, but it has been serviceable so far.<p>Insurance isn't mentioned at all in the article. WUI areas have become nearly impossible to insure, even if you're doing all the things right for making your property fire-resistant (and most homeowners in these areas aren't). As long as California's housing market stays red-hot, there will still be another sucker willing to pay for California's state-insurance-plan-of-last-resort, but someday, somehow, something's gonna change and all of a sudden a lot of people won't be able to afford homeowner's insurance, and that's going to gut a lot of the fire-prone small towns.<p>Newer state building codes are much more fire-resistant. Structures in the town of Paradise that had been built in the last 10 to 15 years largely all survived, even when all neighboring buildings were destroyed. New construction going into these places isn't going to burn the same way the old construction did; future costs will be less devastating, and it takes time for fuels to build up to the levels necessary for apocalyptic events.<p>The state, also, is slowly getting less dumb about preventative fuel maintenance and the issues around prescribed burning are getting worked on.<p>"Should these places exist at all" is about as fair a question as whether Phoenix or Las Vegas or New Orleans should exist, but it's kind of a boring argument because there's no state-run central planning that is going to forcibly relocate everyone or refuse to rebuild any of them again.<p>A more interesting question is, "what do the changing conditions over the next 10 years mean for where <i>I</i> should live?"