It is wildfire season in California. The first typically come in early to middle autumn when the land is dry as a bone and the Santa Ana Winds blow hot air to fan the flames. A spark here and the fire is started. A few burning embers caught up in the winds, and the fire spreads to catastrophic proportions. If not every year we are treated to this disaster, it is a good many years.
Later, when winter comes and the rains pour down, the burnt vegetation and barren landscape will never hold back the waters. We will have mud slides. More disaster. Sliding mud, believe me, is a horrible menace. Water running downhill can cause tremendous damage. Think of mud as dense, heavy water, and you begin to see its capability. I saw it one year roll through a house like a mucky wrecking ball. Good thing my neighbors weren’t home that day. Would have killed them, for sure.
So with the first we have the news crews. We have the stories. We have the macro stores, told from helicopters and from the fire lines, dealing with the overall intensity of the fires, where it is spreading, its percentage of containment, and the number of houses the first have destroyed. We get to see the burning hillsides, the houses bursting in flames like Maison Flambe. We see the fire fighters struggling bravely to contain and push back the surging conflagration. Every year.
And every year we also get the micro stories. The up close and personal stories. We see men adn women sharing tears, sifting through the ruins of their houses, the charred remains of their personal possessions. We see them looking for their pets, looking for what remains of family heirlooms and photos. We hear them trying to console themselves by showing gratitude for the fact that they are still alive and all the lost were the material possessions. We see these people go from a multi-million dollar house to a cot in a gymnasium shelter in twenty minutes time. Fires move quickly in the mountain and canyon areas.
It is hard not to feel sorry for them. You feel sympathetic, share at least a modicum of pain. You put yourself in their shoes. You wonder what it would be like. And while I feel the sympathy and empathy for people who have been victimized by natural disasters, I also wonder what they were thinking when they decided to build their homes there.
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I realize this is an age old question. People wonder it about those who build their house to closely to a river that is prone to flood. People wonder about trailer parks and domiciles built in the path of hurricanes and tornadoes. Sometimes you can’t help it. Sometimes the hurricane, fire, flood or tornado just takes a wrong turn and comes barreling down your boulevard.
But the fact remains many of these houses should never be built on hilltops, canyons and wooded areas where they are just inviting disaster to come for a visit. We have seen this movie enough times to realize as beautiful as it is in these places, we just can’t afford to be building there. It is stupid. It is even more stupid when the same people build and then rebuild, after a previous disaster.
I know, you live there, you love the view, it’s so romantic, the great whatever, but it seems like it is my tax dollars that are bailing you out. It is me who has to smell or the charring that is exacerbated by the housing developments. Days of foul smoke and smoky stench. Yes, it would be there anyway, but it would never be the disaster it is if the houses weren’t part of the equation. It would just be burning woods, canyons, the natural cycle where fires eliminate the surplus vegetation.
This is a lousy economy. It doesn’t have to be made worse by stupid planning and development. We do not have to build on every square inch of the natural landscape. We don’t have to transpose the natural landscape with an ugly housing development that is destined to be destroyed by wildfires. And in a time when neither federal government or state government has the money to maintain what mediocre civic services we already have, we really don’t need to be shelling out money via emergency funding so homeowners can indulge themselves in places they don’t belong.
I believe the first time there is a disaster, the government helps you out. The second time, if you persist on living where you shouldn’t be building, you had better have adequate insurance or be prepared to be on your own when the disaster strikes. Sure, the fire fighters will be noble and try to save you, your pets, and your house. But if they can’t, then it is up to you to pick up the tab. If you can’t pick up the tab, if insurance rates are so dear that you can’t afford homeowners’ insurance, then be prepared to suffer mightily. Be prepared to suffer financially. Be prepared to move elsewhere. Instead of where you don’t belong.
