Seven years before wildfires tore through opposite ends of the Los Angeles area, the Tubbs Fire in Northern California's Sonoma County jumped a six-lane freeway and decimated Santa Rosa's Coffey Park subdivision,

In the era when American cities regularly caught fire, the widespread destruction seeded what looks, in retrospect, like possibility.

The Eaton and Palisades fires have consumed more than 37,000 acres of homes, businesses and landmarks in Altadena and Pacific Palisades.