Fire and The chorus of Cassandras

[roseembolism]

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.

Comments

[seawasp]

The brush is now being removed.

There will be some minor side-effects.

Possibly this is not what the homeowners, city, and county had in mind, however.

I like to point at things like this whenever people around here are talking about "save the Pine Bush". "The only way to save the Pine Bush is to burn it. Not just small 'controlled burn' areas but square miles of conflagration that will wipe out all human civilization in the area."

If we choose to live in areas that normally go through a boom-bust cycle including lots of fire, we are of course putting ourselves in the path of that fire... and if we try to stop it from happening, as you say, without a lot of foresight -- and the APPLICATION of that foresight -- we will get burned...

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

There was some movement in the last couple months after the Teahouse Fire; some neighborhoods cut the heaviest brush on their blocks and then brought in goats. But that was too little, too late.

It would be interesting though to compare the situation in SoCal to that in the Midwest, where by all rights people should live in underground bunkers, and yet trailer parks of all things are popular.

[racerxmachina.livejournal.com]

From talking to some folks who were homeowners, there's a big "you can't make me, so nyeah" attitude that Will. Not. Go. Away. Painted Cave, Teahouse... what's it going to take before they think of something other than themselves and their own stubbornness?

[sandpanther.livejournal.com]

what's it going to take before they think of something other than themselves and their own stubbornness?

Looking at their house, which got torched because they didn't cut the brush back, and their neighbors, which didn't because they did?

One may only hope. And in any event, that problem has been resolved for the majority of the hills above the city for the next several years. Mother Nature gets the ultimate vote on this matter.