A firefighting helicopter drops water as the Sunset Fire burns in the Hollywood Hills on Jan. 8 as wildfires fueled by intense Santa Ana Winds moved across Los Angeles County.

What Los Angeles has endured over the past week might be hard to fathom for those who have ever lived close by a desert, or in any other region in which the natural environment is always a few weeks of drought away from turning into tinder. But that is where almost all of us live today, as residents of the Hudson Valley will attest after the wildfires that chewed up thousands of acres in November.

The ongoing devastation in southern California, however, is on another scale, with whole neighborhoods of homes and businesses reduced to ash and smoldering foundations as high winds spread flames across a bone-dry landscape. Nearly 40,000 acres have burned, leaving more than........

© Times Union