The difficulty people have in understanding that these fires are inevitable is why they won't stop anytime soon. People will die because of our collective inability to accept the ecology of the region.

It's more like there's a crowded place with a gun pointed at the middle of the crowd. Every 30m the gun is cocked. 1-10m after that based on a random timer, it fires.

If someone trips and accidentally pulls the trigger after 32m in are they liable? Maybe, but only in the smallest way. The actual problem is the gun or the people walking in front of it.

It's wrong to use the word "may" for these fires. These areas have evolved to burn and will do so unless we shrink wrap each plant.

Humans put the gun there, we started burning which gave rise to an ecosystem that thrived on burning and encouraged more. Then, we settled that area en masse.

Whether or not a fire is inevitable has nothing to do with liability for starting a fire.

If a poorly maintained utility truck didn’t start the fire...maybe eventually there would have been controlled burns/fires that ultimately prevented the damages that resulted from this fire. Or maybe, as you say the forest inevitably catches on fire from a natural act (act of god - a legal term of art) and forest fire burns in a less populated area and no damage is caused to people/homes...or maybe lightning starts the same fire in the same location and causes the same damages, well even then insurance exists to cover that, but otherwise there wouldn’t be liability the same as someone negligently/intentionally setting the fire.

Fires can legally be acts of god, same as the law might treat a hurricane or tornado...but unlike the later humans can’t (at least not yet) cause them intentionally or negligently, obviously fires are different as they canso liability (criminal and/or civil) is appropriate for fires started intentionally or negligently.

What if that person trips because they left all kinds of crap on the floor where they needed to walk?

If the "accident" could have been averted by making a reasonable effort to maintain equipment and the surrounding area, then it seems like there should be some liability. Whether that is the case, I don't know.

If you lean against a wall and the wall falls over (killing people), are you liable?

Maybe. Depends on the facts (what you provided are not exactly facts, just a fact) and the claim for liability.

Questions/issues include:

1. Did you build the wall? Were you negligent in building the wall? Did you breach some professional/industry standard?

2. Did you intend to knock the wall down? Were you negligent in knocking the wall down? Did you know or should you have known if you lean against the wall it will fall?

There are an infinite number of facts one could make up that might change the claim and outcome of liability (also note This is generally about civil liability, but it could possibly extend to criminal liability when talking about death).

There is a pretty famous liability case all Law school students come across early in their torts class, as I recall a driver’s tire blew and he lost control of the vehicle and killed someone. Are the liable? Well come to find out that yes, all drivers have a duty to other drivers to make sure their vehicle is safe for the road and in this case a “reasonable person” (another legal term of art) would have known it was not safe to drive on bald tires and the driver was negligent not maintaining their vehicle safety which was the proximate cause of the death.

> Did you know or should you have known if you lean against the wall it will fall?

That's a pretty reasonable question based on my proposed scenario. Everything else is a pretty deep stretch.

There's also the question of what is "right" versus what is lawful, which is a map versus territory situation.

Anyway, I'm sure a case can and will be built. And part of the reason will be that humans need scapegoats.

False equivalency. They are not the same.