The truth is burning stronger than ever in Los Angeles.

And it begs the question: What version of California can we afford?

The question comes with a very, very big asterisk.

That asterisk is blunt: Should all Californians pay the bill for those who opt to live in substantially higher fire risk areas?

And turning off the power clearly isn’t doing the trick when red flag situations that offer the trifecta of high winds, low humidity, and dry vegetation develop.

Southern California Edison cut off power in high risk areas when Santa Ana winds were forecast.

The argument is such a move reduces the risk of wildfires from downed power lines and electrical equipment. They are among the leading cause of wild land fires.

Yet, here we are.

Los Angeles is having its worst wildfire situation ever with multiple incidents including those with zero containment after days of burning. Whether it eclipses the more than 18,800 homes and other structures burned in Paradise in 2018 has yet to be seen.

Meanwhile, PG&E customers are enjoying the highest electricity bills in the continental United States with a typical household customer paying $38 more a month than 14 months ago just to underground 2,000 miles or so of power lines.

That bill is right around $16 billion.

Keep in mind, that’s just a start. 

They’d like to bury 10,000 miles.

It means just for burying existing electrical infrastructure sky high PG&E bills will go even higher.

And when all is said and done, there would still be a lot of unburied lines in lower risk areas that can still go down in wind storms and ignite fires.

Several years ago, the California Public Utilities Commission reported noted there were 40,000 miles of bare power lines in high risk areas throughout the state.

Will burying all of them reduce the wildfire risk enough?

Only time will tell.

You might blame PG&E’s well-documented historic failure to replace aging equipment in a timely manner — as well as that of its for-profit utility cousins — as being part of the problem, and you’d be correct.

But they are only part of the problem.

Many Californians, to varying degrees, add to the fire risk.

Most do so by not heeding Cal Fire’s basic mantra about creating defensible space in rural areas, whether it is nearly treeless terrain in places such as the Altamont Hills or on the valley floor or in the Sierra foothills and lower elevation forests.

The same goes for urban dwellers that don’t take to heart city fire departments’ constant reminders about clearing weeds and combustible debris.

It may not replicate a typical wildfire, but given the right conditions and a fire not being spotted soon enough, places like Manteca can lose 34 tract homes just like Stockton in 2008.

Those who deliberately build not just in high risk fire areas, also compound the issue with limited access.

Cal Fire in the 1950s could tackle fires quicker in wild land interface area because there were less people living in them.

Since then, many of those areas have been developed with tracts of homes.

Now the task of making sure people are safe — the clear top priority by far — takes much longer to do. As such, resources are diverted in the critical early stages of a wildfire from trying to start its containment before it gets out of control.

This is not a problem that developed just because some movie star worth $60 million wanted to build a mansion atop a wind-swept vista.

More and more people have moved into such areas to secure housing they can afford.

Mountain House, incorporated as San Joaquin County’s eighth city last July, is near the edge of a high risk area.

The hills and nearby land can have dry vegetation, low humidity, and high winds. It may just be outside the Cal Fire red zone, but it could be in a path of a wind-swept inferno where hot embers carried by a dry wind rapidly changes the dynamics.

Mountain House, given all the variables from avoiding developing good farmland to other environmental impacts, is still a wise urbanization choice given California’s challenging conditions. 

That said, should a PG&E customer in Mountain House — or Manteca for that matter — pay the bill to reduce the wildfire risk of someone in Arnold along Highway 4 in Calaveras County that state studies have shown could suffer the same consequences in a wildfire as Paradise?

Simply burying the power lines won’t eliminate the fire risk. 

There are still a wide array of causes traced back to whether it is sparks from a rowing chain dragged on pavement by a vehicle, improperly monitored burn piles, or someone using power equipment to clear brush that triggers a fire.

Lightning caused fires happen all the time but they are dwarfed by man’s follies, unintended or not.

Insurance companies are clearly getting skittish.

A typical home in Manteca is now paying anywhere from a half to one fifth that a homeowner is to insure a house on rolling terrain covered with wild grass (dry weeds in the fire season) and populated with scrub oaks and such in Tuolumne County.

While your risk is based generally in the area you reside to drive the price of the premium you pay, insurers will need to spread their losses in order for the California market to be economically viable for them to be able to issue policies.

It’s the way the world works.

At the same time, many Californians — especially those in PG&E territory — are paying to reduce wildfire risk through higher rates with little or no direct benefit to them.

Top that off with state dollars needed to deal with wildfires when they are active and the long recovery afterwards.

You can make a case we are all in this together as Californians which is true.

But the definition of advance derangement is doing the same thing over and over again even with little tweaks and still getting the same result.

Sometimes you just have to pull the plug.

That is what the City of Roseville essentially did back in the 1980s.

Six homes, built as part of a tract development along Linda Creek, started to sustain flood damage almost on a yearly basis.

They were not in a known floodplain when Roseville approved fhe development. No one, however, envisioned runaway growth upstream that substantially increased runoff flow after average storms that occurred over the course of 20 years.

Roseville finally refused to issue permits to repair damage.

The city ended up buying the homes to settle litigation that argued Roseville created the problem for allowing the six homes to be built.

California may just have to say no to rebuilding or else reduce density and increases passive development measures to reduce wildfire risk in some areas.

We are only fooling ourselves if we think the $38 a month households are now paying to “harden” PG&E’s high risk service territories will reduce the potential for wildfire without accompanying changes in California’s development patterns.

And that applies to new development as well as rebuilding after wildfires.

This column is the opinion of editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of The Bulletin or 209 Multimedia. He can be reached at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com