As all of you may have heard via TV, the radio or the Internet, So. California has a series of wildfires raging through the lower part of the state. The first ones broke out in Malibu and then later spread to Canyon Country. There is one burning in LA county, Orange County, Ontario, Lake Arrowhead, Running Springs and San Diego. The gov. has placed the fire areas under a state of emergency and President Bush declared seven counties as natural disaster centers. Intergovernmental cooperation at its best.
I am one of the unfortunates who lives in San Bernardino County and can smell the fires burning through Lake Arrowhead and Running Springs. Here in the city we can smell the smoke, not see the mountains and we have raining ash since they broke out. I have family in two areas that may have to evac, E. Highland and Oceanside so everything is high alert.
The source of these fires? Well one broadcast said arson. Sounds familiar in Old Fire three years ago that burned behind my university. I do know that the aggravating circumstances are the Santa Ana winds or better properly pronounced as the Santana Winds meaning "hot winds." Old timers call them the "devil winds" and so right they are. The other is that we have had a dry spell and we all know that dry stuff is a fire's best friend. My thoughts are if this were arson, why do they always manage to time their fires right when these devil winds start to blow? True the winds are fairly predictable in terms of season but it is like they always plan right when they know the firefighters will be stretched to their thinnest. Any thoughts on that?
Hope everyone is well by you.
Why do arsonists set fires at the worst time? Because it'll make the biggest, most impressive fire, and for them, the bigger and more out of control, the better.
I live in Rancho San Diego and it has been pretty crazy. The area is largely a refugee site from a fire thats been burning hard in the hills surrounding us. The winds, however, have died down around us and the fire fighters have been fighting it with controled burns. So far it seems to be disapearing. I'm not all that worried as it would have to burn down the area to get to me, but some of the roads are closed and all of the schools are shut down for evac sites and ash.
I have yet to hear a reason for the 3 fires currently burning around here. The Witch Creek fire, which is now the largest fire in Cali history, is eating away at southern cali slowly while the other two are getting either bigger or smaller. A few of my friends live in the way of the fire close to us, so I'm not exactly sure what happened to their houses.
I could care less if it was arson or not really. Southern Cali needs to burn more in my opinion. We get so little rainfall now that most of the wild plantlife is dead or dying, creating a huge amount of dead brush sitting ontop of dried dirt. Too much to control burn, so it either needs to all burn away or we need some rain fall for a change. Anybody that has lived here for more than 20 years has been saying that there has been record lows on rainfall over the past ten years.
Taking one look around all I can say is that arson or not, this place is begging to burn up in flames.
You certainly have a practical approach True Avery. True there has been little rainfall and there are a lot of dry brush. Here though there is not a whole lot since Old Fire passed through three years agao. The worst thing we had to deal with was mudslides like what happened at St. Sophia's retreat. This however is like a recurring dream maybe nightmare.
Jae: So we have pyromaniacs running around that wait for the opportune moment? Arson is a tough case to prove though since the evidence needed is often destroyed. I also heard that one was an accident, set but a welding torch.
I find it unlikely that this is arson. From what I've heard, wildfires this time of year are not uncommon. As Avery said, with this little rainfall, it's practically asking to ignite. All it'd take would be one spark. Heck, maybe not even that, if it got hot and dry enough it's conceivable that it might even spontaneously combust.
It is fire season in California, and I find it highly unlike that arsonists would do that. I agree with what JM12 said, most of those fires are either an accident, or naturally.
Those fires are pretty bad. I hope those that were rendered homeless will be able to get another home and generally restart their lives. :)
I hope FEMA does a better job there than they did with Katrina... my cousin still hasn't got his house rebuilt yet...
and something else: fox news apparently thinks Al Qaeda is causing the wildfires.
Link=>
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/10/24/fox-news-al-qaeda-is-causing-the-ca-wildires/)
I'm hearing that the FBI shot a 28 year old guy as he was starting a fire... it's second hand news though, so that's all I know.
A lot of the time second hand news is no more than gossip.