I’ve written about fires once or twice and so hesitate to repeat myself or others. But fires aren’t letting up. They’ll keep repeating themselves.

I remember the dismay I felt when reading about all those federally-insured beach houses along the Carolina coast that had been swept away and rebuilt, some as many as 12 times, simply because it had been made profitable to do so. That seemed one step beyond insane; those other people, and the institutions supporting them, weren’t even expecting a different result. In a world of diminishing resources, how could this happen? Well, when I heard our governor’s response to the devastating conflagrations down south and his commitment to build it back — maybe a little better — I understood. It happens in the moment.

I take no issue with a person’s need or desire to restore their life, livelihood or home after catastrophe. How could I, living as I do on the edge of a canyon populated by mature eucalyptus. I’ve dealt as best I can, on my side of the fence, with the threat they pose, but the trees grow on city land, a city that has acknowledged the danger, drawn up plans for remediation and failed to act. Instead, and true to form, they declared the canyon an urban wildfire zone, which essentially palms their responsibility off on adjacent homeowners in the form of escalated insurance policies — if they can still be gotten — and inflated reconstruction costs in the event of the inevitable.

So I’m curious to see what changes will come from the cataclysmic Los Angeles fires.

The governor wants people to rebuild quickly, but only if they build exactly what they’d lost. Well, rebuilding what was already there — the beach house approach — merely amplifies the predicament. And, if our county is any indication, many rural residents long ago lost trust in the process or just couldn’t afford it, and housed themselves without the bother of permits. They can only build back quickly what is on record, or face impossible standards for access, septic, seismic; the list goes on.

The governor also wants to forego CEQA state-mandated environmental review. CEQA has exhausted its idealistic charm, it’s credibility, proportion and integrity. Thoroughly hijacked by privileged interests, it’s probably beyond meaningful reform. It does need to be suspended, and then replaced with something honest and effective.

And then Gov. Newsom hit the nail on the head, adding his intention to authorize self-certification of building permit applications.

The state did learn something from the failure of counties like ours to respond to catastrophe; the building permit process is itself a catastrophe, having devolved from public service to arcane bean-counting and, in the process, lost the ability to review plans for reasonable compliance with general principals of safe and sane construction. Like our local departments, many just ship plans out of town or even off-shore to private firms that get paid by the nitpick. When confronted with real-time suffering, these departments couldn’t even pretend that their foot-dragging incompetence served any positive function whatsoever.

So, self-certification by the licensed, qualified professionals — architects, engineers, contractors who actually shoulder responsibility and liability for their work — would shorten the re-building process by one to four years. I’m not exaggerating. Ask our own CZU fire victims.

Without new models of resilient forest management, suburban/rural settlement and collective responsibility, we’re just rebuilding a bridge to the next, bigger fire. We who have watched the collapse of our own efforts to recover from such events understand that systemic reforms are easier promised than taken. They require acknowledging and correcting failures of governance, and that does not happen voluntarily or quickly, even under duress. In the absence of local leaders or administrators willing to step up to the plate, the governor’s approach may be the best we can hope for.

We are quick to impose costly gadgetry and excessive rules on others in the name of the environment, but fire teaches us the true meaning of net zero, and will repeat itself until we learn to do better.

Mark Primack would like to hear from you at mark@markprimack.com.