The entire system has to be overhauled. The current system relies on a small force of firefighters with a handful of support aircraft.
They have nearly 100 aircraft but most of them are relatively small and they only have a handful of full size tankers.
It also takes the firefighters at least a day to really fully mobilize for a large fire.
The system needs to be overhauled to allow massive immediate responses to any fire.
A budget of 1B per year would allow for nearly 100 full size tankers to be purchased over a decade, as well as a significant number of choppers to get firefighters to the fires immediately.
This would allow a massive response to any fire within 2 hours, and in most cases within an hour. A few dozen aircraft can stop several miles of fire per pass, so it is possible to stop most fires before they get too wide.
This is all well within the State's ability as long as they can get the funds. Oh, and did I mention there are dozens of available cargo aircraft in storage in the SoCal desert that can be converted quickly to do the job?