For all the talk of fire suppression I think our efforts in this are over the last century don't amount to much. FAR more energy on the part of the Forest Service was dedicated to "getting the cut out", and our management has largely consisted of harvesting trees, and thus raising fire danger. One big difference between Europe and the U.S. is that Europe has been managed for centuries, the western U.S. only for a century and a quarter. The First Nations did not dream of cutting forests down and I wonder if they would have any better idea than scientists of how to recover from this assault.