The Beetle is nothing new, a friend found an article about it in the 1880's by Alma.
One of the things that you often see when comparing old photos to new is that there is much more tree etc cover now than then.
I have been waiting for a major fire around here, after all it is when not if this will happen, anybody who has hiked the forests will see the amount of dead wood, and due to the dry climate it takes forever to rot.
We have 2 days of snow and with the colder temperature it should last much longer on the ground than the previous storms. So hopefully this will both abate the existing fires and bring to an end the risk for this year.