When the Palisades Fire started near a hiking trail in Los Angeles on January 7—quickly spreading to more than 200 acres in 20 minutes, and nearly 3,000 acres by the end of the day—some critics argued that land management was to blame.

Legislation to reduce the impact of increasingly devastating forest fires on US federal land passed the House of Representatives on Thursday as firefighters battled to tame the latest in a series of blazes threatening southern California.

Prescribed fires are a critical tool to preventing catastrophic wildfires. Such controlled burning helps reduce the intensity of future fires because it eliminates brush and other flammable materials, also known as "ladder fuels," that helps the flames climb up from the ground to tree canopies where fires become more destructive and spread faster.