A Little More on the Wildfires

I read this on Mark Evanier's POV Online and it kind of annoyed me (not Mark's comments but the ones he references that he finds puzzling as well). Living in San Diego County, I hadn't heard any of this nonsense that those who lost their homes "had it coming" by living in wildfire areas, or having homes built from materials that catch fire easily, or that those who lost multimillion dollar homes in the 2003 or other wildfires hadn't learned their lesson.

To address the last part first, there were many more expensive homes affected by the fires this time than before (I'm not commenting on the Malibu fires as I haven't followed that story, just the SD ones), but that's just the way the fires moved this time, into Rancho Santa Fe and Fairbanks Ranch, which are the priciest parts of San Diego County, but the fires raged through many other areas as well, to the extent I'm pretty sure the vast majority of homes burned were under $1M each.

Which takes me to the other misguided comments. Yes, most of the people who lost their homes had to know they lived in some danger of losing those homes to wildfires. But what were they to do? This entire county is a "wildfire area;" that is, San Diego County is, aside from downtown, the beaches, and Coronado Island, basically a bunch of mesas and valleys, all covered with brush, and we've merely carved into the land or flattened it to fit people in here. Most of the fires were in areas of the county where the land was used for ranching. Some are fairly remote, causing danger when those fires start raging quickly. But ranches are also often close to dense residential areas here--I drive past horse ranches on my way to work every weekday, or did until a new road opened that saves me a little commuting time.

I think the schadenfreude for rich people losing their homes is pretty gross, but sure, it's generally going to be easier to deal with losing your home when you've got lots of money. As far as learning lessons, I think that stems from stories of those who build homes on mudslide areas and rebuild on the same land after losing one down a hillside; I don't think it really applies to the wildfire situation. If you're a rancher, you live where ranchland is at. If you're rich, you live where you have a good parcel of land rather than being squashed next to everyone else in subdivisions. It's the way it is.

The only complaint that may have merit, and Evanier mentions it, is whether the government did enough to keep brush cleared and irrigated. I would imagine it would be very difficult, considering the hundreds of thousands of acres affected and the hundreds of thousands that were fortunate to be unaffected this time, and it would be expensive. San Diego gets very little rain and already pays for most of our drinking water from non-local sources. A couple days into the fires, I heard a fireman complain that after the 2003 fires, those in charge should have done a better job getting prepared, such as having more fire trucks brought down from other towns to be on standby before the Santa Ana winds came, since the winds are a known hazard that occurs the same time every year. In the coming weeks, I'm sure we'll get into blame and there may be a fair amount to go around. Overall, though, I'm much more impressed with the firefighting efforts and coordination this time.