Reimagining Paradise
A point NPR's Kirk Siegler doesn't make in this story is that large-scale city fires used to be somewhat common, and also presented opportunities to massively re-architect towns. The Great London Fire, the Chicago Fire, the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, and wartime destruction, particularly during World War II in Germany and Japan, whilst destructive, also allowed for abandoning patterns and structures which were no longer suitable, and for creating new plans and directions with the benefit of past experience.
The story of Paris's redesign in the 19th century, enabled by revolution rather than catastrophic destruction, is another case in point.
Paradise now has this opportunity.
(Though, with the way things have been progressing in wildfire events over the past few decades, it won't be the last.)
