Reversing course on his threat to cut the state’s federal funding if Californians don’t solve their forest fire problem, President Donald Trump now says he’ll solve it with them.

“We go through this every year; we can’t go through this,” Mr. Trump said Saturday as he toured the state’s massive wildfire zones. “We’re going to have safe forests.”

How to make California’s vast drought-stricken forests “safe” after the Camp Fire grew to the size of Chicago this month, killing dozens if not hundreds of people and burning an entire town to the ground? Mr. Trump promised federal funds and says he has some ideas.

One of those ideas is raking.

It’s not a popular idea.

“You’ve got to take care of the floors. You know the floors of the forests, it’s very important,” Mr. Trump told reporters as he posed with California officials in the charred ruins of Paradise - his first stop on the tour.

Mr. Trump went on to explain that the president of Finland, whom he met on an overseas trip a week earlier, told him about raking the forest floors. “He called it a forest nation,” Mr. Trump said, “and they spent a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things, and they don’t have any problem.”

Finnish President Sauli Niinisto later disputed this. He told a local newspaper that he had briefed Mr. Trump on Finland’s efforts to surveil and care for its forests, The Associated Press wrote, “but said he can’t recall anything being mentioned on raking.”

And raking for leaves and needles is not a normal feature of Finnish fire prevention, according to Rami Ruuska, a forest fires expert at the Finnish Interior Ministry. Instead, Finns focus on removing dead trees from the forest floor — where possible.

Maybe it wasn’t Mr. Niinisto who gave Mr. Trump the raking idea. Maybe it was something he saw on TV.

“I was watching the firemen the other day, and they were raking areas. They were raking areas!” Mr. Trump told Fox News from the Oval Office on Friday - before he left for California. “They’re raking trees, little trees like this - nut trees, little bushes, that you could see are totally dry. Weeds! And they’re raking them. They’re on fire.”

“That should have been all raked out,” he concluded. “You wouldn’t have the fires.”

The Fox host, Chris Wallace, asked whether climate change might not be a larger wildfire factor than unraked debris, but Mr. Trump didn’t think so.

Wherever Mr. Trump got the notion that raking parts of California - be it entire forest floors or the area around little nut trees - could have prevented the Camp Fire, not many people seem to agree.

The online reaction in Finland alternated between those pointing out that the country has a vastly different climate and population density and those making jokes.

The idea’s domestic reception wasn’t much better.

“If preventing wildfires were as easy as raking leaves, we would have done that by now, but it is a very complicated issue.” Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., told MSNBC on Sunday, mentioning climate change, dry weather and high winds. “I hope the president consults some experts, maybe talks to folks who actually know something about wildfires, and really stop believing these bizarre theories that he has.”

This is not to say that raking has nothing to do with fire prevention - even if it’s not the exotic and comprehensive solution Mr. Trump made it sound like.

“His general sentiment is correct - that we need to manage fuels,” said Yana Valachovic, a forest adviser with the University of California’s Cooperative Extension program. “And each year, managing that pine litter adjacent to our homes and buildings is super important. ... But the reality is, to manage every little bit of fuel with a rake is not practical.”

Raking is an effective way to clear light debris like leaves and pine needles away from residences, she said. It’s of much less use on the forest floor, where infernos burn through swaths of brush and other heavy fuels that only heavy machinery can clear.

California’s problems are complicated, she said - a combination of hot, dry climates, poor community design and “100 years of fire suppression” that helped turn forests into tinder boxes.

Like Mr. Trump, Ms. Valachovic said the problem is solvable - but through long-term programs of community education, controlled burns, forest-thinning programs and economic incentives.

Much more than rakes, in other words.

As for the Finns, the secret to their forest management system lies in an early warning system, aerial surveillance system and network of forest roads, said professor Henrik Lindberg, a forest fires researcher at the Häme University of Applied Sciences, a college in southern Finland.

At times of high incendiary risk, Finnish authorities are highly effective at delivering warnings across most forms of media, Mr. Lindberg said.

Local aviation clubs are paid to fly over the most threatened areas of forest, increasing the likelihood fires will be spotted before they spiral out of control. “The ignition probability is about the same as in Sweden, but they’re caught quicker,” Mr. Lindberg said.

And timber and paper companies have built an extensive network of roads through Finland’s forests. Built primarily to make the landscape more accessible for logging, they also slow down the path of a fire — and allow fire brigades to reach the flames faster.

“Almost all Finland is covered by this forest road network, so of course it’s easier to get nearer to the forest fires using fire trucks,” Mr. Ruuska said.

Temperatures in Finland, part of which lies within the Arctic Circle, can drop below minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Even in August, the temperature is usually in the mid-60s.

The incendiary risk is therefore much lower for most of the year in Finland than in California, where high temperatures, dry air and frequent wind make wildfires far more likely.

“It’s not a good comparison,” Mr. Ruuska said. “We have a half-meter of snow during winter, so it’s quite natural that we don’t have any fires over the winter, and our autumn is quite wet.”

Also, Finnish forests are mainly filled with tall boreal trees — pine, spruce and birch — whereas much of Californian vegetation consists of lower-lying chaparral shrub land and small trees, which are more prone to catching fire.

“The whole comparison is a bit wild,” said Mr. Lindberg, who suggested that it would be better to study methods in Mediterranean Europe, where forests are more like those in California.

Despite its effective fire-prevention system, Finland still experiences forest fires: Around 2,500 acres of trees have burned down this year, the highest annual total since 2006, Mr. Lindberg said.

But the damage was still much less severe than in neighboring Sweden, where 62,000 acres were affected.

“We’re doing something right,” Mr. Ruuska said. “But we also have good luck.”

The New York Times contributed.

First Published: November 18, 2018, 10:00 p.m.