Invited perspectives: Four reasons DRR does not work as intended – lessons from the 2025 California wildfires and beyond

Abstract. The 2025 California wildfires revealed persistent gaps in translating well-established knowledge of wildfire risk reduction into effective land-use planning, building practices, and community preparedness. Drawing on the widely discussed case of a wildfire-surviving residential building in Pacific Palisades, this paper examines four interrelated constraints on community resilience that are consistently observed across diverse hazards: limited stakeholder awareness and risk perception; inadequate capacity at both household and institutional levels; weak incentives for proactive adaptation; and governance barriers, including regulatory fragmentation, unclear accountabilities, and insufficient integration of risk into policy frameworks. Prompted by the 2025 California wildfires, this paper examines these gaps in disaster risk reduction (DRR) and highlights how social, economic, and political dynamics interact with these constraints to perpetuate exposure in hazard-prone areas. Examples from other recent disastrous events, such as the 2023 Turkey–Syria earthquakes, the 2024 Valencia floods, and the 2025 Texas floods, illustrate that these challenges are common across diverse hazards and contexts, underscoring the need for more integrated, participatory, and context-sensitive approaches. Strengthening institutional capacity, aligning incentives with risk, and fostering awareness and engagement are essential to support adaptive, equitable, and sustainable resilience strategies capable of addressing both single and multi-hazards.