It is in the nature of optical/IR observatories that we want to build them on high mountains in dry climates. Forest fires are a natural corollary. In the past few years, even besides the terrifying example of Stromlo, there have been substantial fires on or near Mt Wilson, Palomar, Mt Hamilton, Kitt Peak, Mt Graham and Mt Lemmon, close to Mt Hopkins, and probably on other mountains as well. Blaming this on some special properties of Los Angeles is beside the point. The only mountain-top observatories I can think of that are relatively immune to wildfire are those above treeline (like Mauna Kea) or those where the rainfall is so low that the vegetation is too scrubby to support a crown fire (most of the Chilean sites).

What is true is that for most of the 20th century we built too many houses in the path of fires and practiced bad fire suppression policies by stamping out fires wherever possible, leading to buildup of highly flammable undergrowth. After decades of this, when fires are triggered (naturally or otherwise) they have so much fuel that they crown quickly and spread devastatingly. Drought makes it worse and the likely direction of climate change is to make the Southwest more arid.

Western land managers understand this better now. In that respect, large fires are inevitable and not necessarily bad. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t defend Mt Wilson, but it does mean that expanding housing into vulnerable remote areas is a bad idea and that people who live there will have to accept fire as a risk. This is hard to get people to do because nobody likes to say “Sorry, we can’t keep your house from burning down.”

When, exactly, do you think the nature of transform faulting and plate tectonics was discovered?
Los Angeles was founded in 1769.
The boom was oil related, and occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

And the photo shows a fantastic pyrocumulus cloud, with the particulate matter being trapped by an inversion that the steam-rich updraft is punching through.

I hope you stayed away. I’m going to finish up some tasks that can’t wait another day and head back home. Yuck. I’m missing three coworkers who are in evac zones.

Then you build another big city, LA, right in the middle of earthquake hot zone, something also well-known to man for centuries. To kick nature, you chose a spot surrounded by mountains frequented by huge wild fires. Then to really kick nature, you build houses right in the middle of the bone dry hills for that great scenery.

Let the big winds and big fires wipe out the extreme hubris of man.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_ecology