I'm going to agree with your assessment of the wind situation and strongly disagree that last week's winds are the result of rapidly evolving climate change over the last 5 years. Strong, seasonal Santa Ana winds have been documented in the LA basin area for at least 5000 years. Yes, a couple of areas reported mountaintop 90-100mph winds but had they only been the more normal 60-70 what difference would that have made? 60-70 will whip any fire into a catastrophic monster the same as 100mph will.
For what it's worth, Pacific Palisades itself contains a considerable amount of wooded area and the Altadena area - the site of the other major fire - lies at the base of the San Gabriel mountain range and it's heavily wooded. You'd never see a fire as extensive as these had they started in the middle of large residential, non-wooded areas, in my opinion, because there's simply not enough fuel. And in the spirit of not turning political, let's just say that proper forest management over the last 50 years, while obviously not a prevent-all for large wind-driven wildfires, most definitely would have gone a long ways toward mitigating the ones going on right now.
But enough for playing the blame game for now. The daunting aftermath faces tens if not hundreds of thousands of people and for the life of me, I can't envision the scope of the processes necessary for rubble removal, infrastructure rebuilding and the future of those displaced who even with the best of efforts are looking at years before they can even think about rebuilding in the same location from where they were burnt out - if they decide to at all.
