It will be interesting to see what their take on Trump's knife-twisting remarks might be. How supportive would these reps be to withdrawing federal fire suppression funds? Senator Feinstein has in fact championed a large number of forest health and hazardous fuels reduction projects, although funding is never adequate in any one year to cover the magnitude of existing conditions across such a massive scale.

Having said that, I was in the beautiful town of Paradise five years ago for a family members' 80th birthday celebration. The first thing I noticed was the continuous pattern of dense forest vegetation with adjacent flammable structures. Not a question of whether, but when a catastrophic wildfire will occur in a fire and drought-prone environment.

Property owners can take steps to minimize risk, but it has to be a community-wide effort -- to include fireproofing residences using fire-resistant building materials, thinning combustible vegetation, pruning dead tree limbs, removing ladder fuels, cutting tall grasses in late spring before they cure out in the summer, and creating a defensive fire-proof zone around buildings. And again communities must accomplish this on landscape basis, or risk losing everything.