I don’t understand why building homes in a forest makes forest fires move faster. Other than that, good article.
I thought the article was implying that people knew it was unwise to build anything more expensive or irreplaceable than a log cabin in a wood because one day a natural fire might catch nearby.
I have no idea if that’s true though. I guess there might be a lot of reasons why single houses don’t appear in the middle of woods - infrastructure costs for instance.
I don't think the author is claiming that. I interpret the article as saying that the forest fires of 100 years ago were smaller, but so much more numerous that it would be too dangerous to build in the forest. Besides, there was no fire-fighting team to help you when one occurred.