I lived in Los Angeles briefly in 1986. While I lived there, my dad sent me this book:

It talked about landscaping to minimize fire, flood, and mudslide risk, but my key takeaway was, “Only a moron would live in Southern California,” and I moved away before the end of the year.

It was a government publication, so the PDF is available: https://www.fs.usda.gov/psw/publications/documents/psw_gtr067/psw_gtr067.pdf