This is an appropriate strategy for a climate like VA where there's plenty of rain and wildfires aren't part of how the ecosystem evolved to work. On the other hand, places like this part of CA historically burned, and each year accumulate more dead flammable biomass. Applying the same sort of law in the West means companies put in inordinate amounts of work to decrease the odds that when a fire starts it gets counted as their fault: https://www.jefftk.com/p/fire-law-incentives

This particular case is a pretty unusual one where the hiker is saying they were choosing between setting a fire and dying. I doubt they were aware of the law involved, and expect they would have made the same choice regardless.