Back in the 1970's when I lived next to the LA national forest (prime brush fire area), there was actually a city
ordinance that REQUIRED all of the houses to have roofs made of wood shake shingles. You could not have ceramic or any of the artificial wood shingles. By law, we had to have a very flammable roof material.
Dry, wood shingles on a house where there are brush fires almost on a yearly basis. What could possibly be wrong with that?


It was not until the 1980's that people were able to start replacing roofs with a synthetic wood shingle that, honestly, looked way better than real wood.