Yet, almost every fire is ignited by a person — either by mistake or on purpose.

A flat tire on a trailer drags against the asphalt, sending a spark into dry vegetation and setting a racing inferno that kills people and destroys homes. That is how the Carr Fire began. A person with a hammer is believed to have mistakenly set the fires of the Mendocino Complex blaze, now the largest in California history.

Scientists agree that extreme weather patterns brought on by climate change have made fire seasons more destructive, partly by drying out more vegetation that serves as the fuel for wildfires.

Experts also worry that not enough attention is given to all the ways that people have made the problem of wildfires worse. Population growth in California means there are more people on the roads — cars are a prime culprit in wildfires — and more homes built in wilderness areas.

“It would be easy to throw our hands in the air and say it’s just climate change, and we can’t do anything about it,” said Jennifer K. Balch, a professor of geography at the University of Colorado at Boulder and an expert on wildfires. “But actually we are starting the majority of wildfires, and we can do something about it.”

Another factor, many experts say, are policies in California that protect forests from timber harvesting and a reluctance to set off controlled fires to burn vegetation.

William Stewart, an expert on forestry at the University of California at Berkeley, said that part of the California dream was keeping “nature as it is,” with minimal management of forests.

With so many fires burning so often, Stephen Pyne, a fire historian at Arizona State University, worries the public has become accustomed to disaster, unwilling to have difficult conversations about where houses are being built and whether controlled burns are a good idea.

“We just fight fire,” he said. “That’s the easiest political response. I’m beginning to think of these like mass shootings. A shooting happens in a grade school and nothing changes.”

Struggling to make sense of the cataclysm unfolding across California, with so many fires burning, firefighters and officials have often described what the state is facing as the “new normal.”

It has been repeated so often that it has become a cliché, but experts say it actually underplays what is happening.

“This is not the new normal for our high temperatures and wildfires,” said Glen MacDonald, a professor of geography at UCLA. “This is just a steppingstone.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Tim Arango and Inyoung Kang © 2018 The New York Times