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Fire and The chorus of Cassandras
May. 7th, 2009 06:15 pm
It's not a pleasant feeling to see a prediction come true, and to wish it hadn't.
That's my feeling right now watching the Jesusita Fire tear through the canyons above Santa Barbara. The fire is happening right in the area I and other people said it would, and if its effects aren't quite as bad as we predicted, well that's mainly a matter of luck. The fire is still young and out of control as well, it may yet roar through downtown on the way to the beach, taking the Mesa neighborhoods with it.
It's not that the people who warned about this had some special foresight: To anyone who hiked through those canyons and saw the bone-dry chaparral piled ten feat high, it was obvious that all that was needed was a spark to ignite a conflagration that could destroy the whole city. It was obvious to nearly everyone, actually.
So why wasn't anything done? That wasn't a failure of foresight, but of politics. The homeowners, the city, the county were all caught up in a tangle of arguments of how to remove the brush, who was responsible for it, and who would pay for it. The problem and solution were obvious, but the means were expensive, and nobody wanted to pay.
Of course we're paying now. It is natural for the California hills to burn, and we created an artificial environment where fire was prevented. Which isn't bad in itself, but we weren't willing to properly take care of the resulting fuel-choked hills. And devastating fires are the result.
There's a lesson here; a little foresight can go a long way. But ONLY if its listened to.
That's my feeling right now watching the Jesusita Fire tear through the canyons above Santa Barbara. The fire is happening right in the area I and other people said it would, and if its effects aren't quite as bad as we predicted, well that's mainly a matter of luck. The fire is still young and out of control as well, it may yet roar through downtown on the way to the beach, taking the Mesa neighborhoods with it.
It's not that the people who warned about this had some special foresight: To anyone who hiked through those canyons and saw the bone-dry chaparral piled ten feat high, it was obvious that all that was needed was a spark to ignite a conflagration that could destroy the whole city. It was obvious to nearly everyone, actually.
So why wasn't anything done? That wasn't a failure of foresight, but of politics. The homeowners, the city, the county were all caught up in a tangle of arguments of how to remove the brush, who was responsible for it, and who would pay for it. The problem and solution were obvious, but the means were expensive, and nobody wanted to pay.
Of course we're paying now. It is natural for the California hills to burn, and we created an artificial environment where fire was prevented. Which isn't bad in itself, but we weren't willing to properly take care of the resulting fuel-choked hills. And devastating fires are the result.
There's a lesson here; a little foresight can go a long way. But ONLY if its listened to.