California Governor Newsom overstated work that the state had done on preventing future wildfire damage.

I don't know how effective it is to remove some potential fuel from a forest. On that I will defer to experts. This method can't get out of control and become dangerous (a controlled burn has that danger), but it must be a lot more labor-intensive.

Effective action to reduce fire danger requires a tremendous amount of work and money, because it has to be done over the whole region affected by drought. And it has to be done over and over, forever.

Switching to renewable energy and curbing the emissions that cause the drought will be far more efficient in the long term.