California wildfires: can battle against natural disasters be won?

This New York Times story by Kris Johnson and Jesse McKinley is the best I've seen yet on the California wildfires. It points out that with increased development in high-risk areas, a cycle of disasters is guaranteed. As the story also observes, the human tendency is to "overcome" the disaster, instead of drawing any inferences about how future conduct might be altered. An excerpt:More often than not, the human response after fire is to restore, not relocate, said Thomas J. Campanella, an assistant professor of city and regional planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and co-editor of the 2004 book “The Resilient City: How Modern Cities Recover from Disaster.” “After disaster, people are not in any mood to change furthe