I spent nearly two years reporting on wildfire alongside one the most highly experienced fire crews in the country in my hometown, Boulder, Colo. I learned when fire endangers lives it needs to be crushed as quickly as possible. But the right kind of fire is natural and often essential to healthy forests and watersheds; it is a force we cannot and, ultimately, do not want to eradicate.

So what do we do to balance the needs of people and ecosystems? One member of the crew I spent so much time with in Boulder put it this way: If we want to live in paradise, we’re going to have to work for it.

We need to focus on large-scale forest restoration, fire funding and human adaptation. Restoring forests to mitigate fire effects will require a shift in the way we pay for large wildfires.

We must also safeguard our own properties and patches of earth as well as create commonsense zoning and building regulations that will limit the number of vulnerable structures in fire-prone areas.

And we have to recognize the role of climate change, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to minimize unstoppable blazes like the record-breaking Thomas Fire, which has blackened 281,893 acres in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, making it the largest fire in California history.

While visiting fire-ravaged Ventura County last month, Gov. Jerry Brown warned recent blazes may indicate a “new normal.”

“We’re facing a new reality in this state where fires threaten people’s lives, their property, their neighborhoods and, of course, billions and billions of dollars,” he said.

The loss of lives, homes, businesses, infrastructure and forests in California in recent months has been devastating, and worthy of awe and analysis. The exhaustion of firefighters and homeowners is intense and the threat is ongoing. Still, the governor’s comments left many of us who know a thing or two about fire scratching our heads.

Wildfires of this magnitude may not have played out precisely in this way before, but they are far from unknown.

What California is seeing this year isn’t a “new reality,” as the governor described it, but rather the next tick in an upward trend. Huge, destructive, wind-driven fires enabled by high temperatures, low humidity and abundant fuel are now par for the course in the West.

The phenomenon of the so-called “megafire” (a blaze that burns more than 100,000 acres) was virtually unseen, at least in modern history, before 1995, but most western states have experienced their worst wildfires on record since then. Since 2005, there have been roughly 10 megafires per year, transforming the landscape of the American West.

Also consistent are the top three reasons fires are getting bigger, more extreme and more costly:

1 Fire dollars are being spent mainly on suppression, depriving of funds for critical treatments such as selective forest thinning and prescribed burns.

2 The wildland-urban interface “problem,” as fire experts refer to it, has been compounding for decades in most western states. There are now more people living in the danger zones than ever before, increasing the chances fire will impact people, and vice versa.

3 Researchers have already drawn a strong link between human-induced climate change and fire. Brown was right to suggest that climate change could lead to more blazes like the Thomas Fire. In general, temperatures are rising and moisture levels are dropping. Snowpack melts earlier, spring comes prematurely and dry time for forests is lengthening. The fire season is roughly 78 days longer than it was 30 years ago.

This era of “climate-enabled” fire puts all of us in wildfire country, and beyond, in a dangerous spot. But this moment is not without opportunity.

Time and again, I heard some version of this truth: Wildfire is not a forest problem but a human one.

Preserving life, livelihoods, homes and wildlands in an era of large, complex fires will take more than just Pulaski fire-fighting hand tools, dollars and wishful thinking. Only when we assume individual responsibility for our fate will we determine, in part, what relationship we will have with wildfire.

Heather Hansen is a journalist and the author of the forthcoming “Wildfire: On the Front Lines With Station 8” (Mountaineers Books).