Pictures from the Los Angeles wildland fires that show the smoldering remains of homes that once filled an Altadena subdivision are reminders that it can happen here.

Those fires aren’t extinguished yet and the total losses in property and lives haven’t all been counted. In fact, late last week, firefighters were battling a new fire in northwestern Los Angeles County and had ordered evacuations from around Lake Castaic, a popular recreation area.

Fire officials have repeated the sobering warning that these fires are examples that changes in our climate — drier weather and stronger winds — have turned so-called “fire season,” into a yearlong threat.

Marin has sent 90 firefighters and equipment to help with the Southland blazes. Local businesses, restaurants and nonprofit agencies have been working to raise funds and support for the fires’ victims.

We’ve seen destructive wildland fires here. The 1995 Vision fire grew to more than 8,800 acres across the Point Reyes Peninsula and turned 45 homes into ashes before it was stopped. The devastating losses from the fires in Sonoma, Mendocino and Lake counties were too close for comfort — too close in environment, built and wild, to be able to shrug off as a horror that couldn’t happen in Marin.

The North Bay fires have helped drive local action to take preventive and protective measures in Marin.

The voter-approved formation of the Marin Wildfire Prevention Authority has advanced long-needed work to create and maintain so-called “fuel breaks” in hopes of giving fire crews a fighting chance to save neighborhoods. Crews have been working to create large fuel breaks in Ross Valley and Novato. Reducing vegetation along evacuation routes has been another priority.

This preventive work has to be expanded and maintained.

The authority’s dedicated budget is aimed at making a difference, getting Marin — its landscape, its fire crews and firefighting strategies and emergency communication — as prepared as possible should such an inferno threaten Marin.

For years, Marin property owners have been urged to “harden” their homes, taking fire-safety measures that could save their houses and help stop the spread of the fire to their neighbors’ properties. The authority conducts home inspections to identify risks. It also offers grants for needed vegetation removal work.

Mark Brown, the authority’s executive officer, says those inspections have been successful in improving fire safety.

Many of the local warnings and strategies are based on lessons learned from other wildland fires.

Brown says more work needs to be done, but that Marin communities that make up the authority are better prepared than other parts of the state.

Destructive infernos that have erupted in parts of the state are driving local initiatives and participation.

No area may be invulnerable to destruction from a wildland fire propelled by prolonged 100 mph winds that left Los Angeles neighborhoods, rich and poor, in charred ruins. Aircraft vital to firefighting teams’ efforts to stop or slow down the blowtorch-like flames and wind-driven rain of destructive embers could not fly due to the conditions.

But measures being taken today could save lives and homes tomorrow. They could provide the fighting edge fire crews need to save a home, even lives. They may be a difference between stopping the flames from spreading and an entire neighbor being wiped out by a fast-moving fire.

The Los Angeles fires are another reminder that the threat is all too real and — individually, as a neighborhood and as a community — we can’t afford to let our guard down.