Ernest Partridge
Pilot Rock and The Pinnacles. San
Bernardino National Forest
(Ernest Partridge)
What is a tried-and-true southern California "conservative" Republican
to do when a hundred-foot wall of flames comes roaring up the slope
toward his private home? Boldly stand his ground, garden hose in hand?
Or does he step aside and allow "big government" professionals, paid and
equipped by his taxes, to do their job? The attitude of his hero, Ronald
Reagan, is crystal clear: "The nine most terrifying words in the English
language" he said, "are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'" It’s a
hard-case dilemma: stand by your principles and perish, or yield those
principles to stark necessity and thus survive.
Kinda like the dilemma faced by a Christian Scientist with acute
appendicitis.
And when "big gummint bureaucrats" impose a mandatory evacuation, does
our conservative defy the order? When one of our neighbors in Lake
Arrowhead did just that two weeks ago, the fire marshal replied, "Very
well, but please leave us your dental records, so that we can identify
your charred remains when this is all over." Sometimes reality can be a
real bitch.
Of course, if the same stubborn conservative is then trapped by the
flames, the fire fighters will come to his rescue, thus expending time
and resources that would be better directed at a coordinated attack on
the fire.
In tranquil moments, when there are no fires, conservative principle
prevails. Thus, in wealthy, rock-ribbed Republican San Diego county,
"tax reformers" had their way as police and fire department budgets were
slashed. And when the fires came two weeks ago, the local and county
officials frantically called upon federal, state, and outside municipal
fire fighters to come to their aid, which they did. The cost of that
necessarily delayed response was thousands of acres and hundreds of
homes. Still more acres and homes were spared, thanks to the equipment
and personnel paid for by the taxes of others. Thus the proud,
"government-free," "self-made" San Diego conservatives became, in
effect, parasites.
Blame the enviros -- global warming had nothing to do with it.
The
right-wing wasted no time placing the blame for the fires on their
favorite target: the environmentalists. Quoth
Rush Limbaugh: "The Sierra Club will not let you get in there --
none of the environmentalists will -- and get rid of the dead junk that
is at the bottom of these forests that is just like kindling wood.... In
order to thrive, we have to alter our environment, and, if altering the
environment means clearing out some dead brush to make fire less of a
gigantic possibility than it already is, then we have a responsibility
to do that." And
Glenn Beck
at CNN: "the environmentalists, the same ones that [are] going to
tell me it’s my fault because I have an SUV, these same damn
environmentalists are the ones that have stopped people in California
from clearing brush on their own property."
It's a flat-out damnable lie! Residents of our mountain
communities are required to clear brush on their property, and
face fines if they refuse. Environmentalist have no problem whatever
with these regulations. That's the simple truth of it, as Limbaugh,
Beck, et al, could have found out in a moment simply by picking up their
phones. But as we know so well by now, the right-wing
screech-merchants never let the facts get in the way of a smear.
Didn’t global warming have some role in the California fires? “No way!,”
the right wing tells us. At the same time that he told the whopper about
brush clearing on private property, Glenn Beck was hosting Chris Horner
and R. J. Smith of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. This is
what
Horner had to say:
Global warming is not a likely suspect for the
following reason. The warming that the alarmists are talking about
is one degree Fahrenheit over the past 150 years, most of which
occurred before World War II. None of which are occurred in the last
decade. OK. We can reliably take global warming off the suspect
list. Second, it’s not clear that a warmer world would be a drier
world.
But here is the plain fact of the matter: southern
California is in the midst of a prolonged drought. This year, Los
Angeles suffered
the driest year in the 130 years of record-keeping. And
climate scientists have warned that permanent drought in southwest
United States is one of the likely consequences of global warming. Did
climate change cause the drought that led to the California fire storms
of 2003 and 2007? Typically cautious climate scientists will tell
us, “quite likely but not
certain.”. That’s all the slack that the right-wing deniers
require, as once again they equate “not certain” with “certainly not!”
"It's the home-owners' fault, they shouldn't live in hazardous
areas." Because I am one of those mountain-dwelling home
owners, I must take this charge seriously and face it honestly. In the
following, I will discuss conditions in the San Bernardino mountains,
where I live. I am not qualified to comment on conditions in Malibu, San
Diego county, or other fire locations.
When we bought our house ten years ago we were, of course, aware of the
fire hazards. But it seemed to us to be an acceptable risk. Now, having
evacuated in October, 2003, and again two weeks ago, we are much less
certain that it was a wise decision. But conditions are significantly
different now than they were a decade ago. Four to five years ago,
hundreds of thousands of ponderosa pine trees in the San Bernardino
mountains were destroyed, not by fire, but by the prolonged drought and
the resulting bark beetle infestation. Those vast stands of brown ghost
trees threatened an inferno, and when it arrived in October, 2003, those
dead trees intensified it. That fire, "The Old Fire,"
consumed 91,000 acres and 970 homes,
and burned up to our
property line, where it was halted by the fire crews. From our
refuge at a cousin's home, a false internet report and the TV news led
us to believe for about three agonizing days that our house was lost.
Then reassuring news came to us from the internet. It was a very close
call. (See "If it Burns, it Earns"). Last month’s "Grass Valley Fire" at
Lake Arrowhead was contained about six miles to the east of us.
Those who build and buy homes amidst chaparral, which is found on the
south slope of the mountain adjacent to the city of San Bernardino, are
asking for trouble. Fire is a natural, even a required, occurrence in a
chaparral biotic community. Accordingly, there are few structures to be
found there. Most of the "Old Fire" took place in the largely
uninhabited south slope. It caused the most damage when the Santa Anna
winds from the mountain blew the fire into the city of San Bernardino,
taking out more than three hundred homes, and then later when the fire approached and crossed the ridge line and
moved into the forested communities.
The thriving, century-old pines and cedars in the San Bernardino
National Forest testify to the ability of the forest to survive wild
fires. Under natural conditions, occasional fires burn away the ground
fuel, sparing the trees. If fires are suppressed and ground fuel builds
up, then a conflagration can follow that levels the entire forest. The
right wing critics to the contrary notwithstanding, the Sierra Club is
fully aware of this and encourages the clearing of brush in inhabited
areas.
I don't know when the last fire took place on what is now our property,
but it was probably more than one hundred and twenty years ago. We know
this from the stump of the huge, beetle infested ponderosa that was
removed from our property two months before the Old Fire in 2003. That
stump has about one hundred and twenty annual rings, and no apparent
fire scars. (See
Elegy for a Ponderosa Pine Tree).
Today, our house and our neighborhood are safer than they were four
years ago. Safer, but not safe. Hundreds of thousands of dead and dying
ponderosas have been removed from the mountains, eight of them from our
property. Now there are meadows and open spaces where before there were
thick forests. My immediate neighbors and I have surrounded our homes
with wide fire breaks and, as required, we have cleared the brush away
from the structures. Numerous fire hydrants, installed decades ago, are
at the ready. Nearby lakes -- Silverwood, Gregory, Arrowhead, Big Bear
-- have abundant water available to the fire-fighting helicopters and
aircraft.
Even so, unlike ten years ago, we now have evacuation lists and
evacuation kits, and are prepared to leave at an hour's notice if
necessary. More likely, we would have several hours to collect
irreplaceable possessions, as was the case in 2003 and again the week
before last.
The local media shapes up. In 2003, reporting of the local
network TV stations was deplorable, and I said as much in my Crisis
Papers essay, If it Burns, it
Earns.
Too much air time was wasted with
uninformative "human interest" stories, and the reporters were
appallingly uninformed about place names. The best information, by far,
came from volunteered reports on the internet, in particular the website
rimoftheworld.net.
This year, the TV reporting was much improved. The reports were timely
and accurate (at least about the San Bernardino mountain fires -- I can
not assess the other reports). The coverage during the first three days
was non-stop and without commercials. A commendable public service, but
all too brief. On day four, the soap operas and game shows
returned. Once again, the best information about "our fire," was at rimoftheworld.net.
The Upshot. Should people be allowed to build and live in
fire-prone areas? Yes and no – there is no simple answer. “It depends.”
The libertarians will insist that it is no business of government to
tell private citizens where they may or may not live. They should be
allowed to live wherever they wish, and face the consequences of their
decisions. Sounds fair. But those same libertarians, who insist upon
minimal taxes and minimum government, must not expect any assistance
when the fires come their way. The defense of their domiciles, like the
location thereof, is their own private business. Most citizens do not
agree, believing that coordinated action by professional fire fighters
and heavy equipment (publicly financed, of course) can be counted on to
produce better results than the summation of individual property owners
with garden hoses.
No one in his right mind should build on chaparral slopes, and in fact
very few do. Drive up the San Bernardino mountain range on state routes
18 and 330 or along Silverwood Lake to the north, and you will find
chaparral and scrub, but not many residences. The residential and
commercial areas are to be found in the forested region near and beyond
the ridge line, where strict fire-suppression ordinances are in effect
and state-of-the-art equipment is in place.
For the tens of thousands of mountain residents, the fire risk has been
an acceptable cost of the delights of mountain living: a moderate
climate, lakes and hiking trails, abundant wildlife, beautiful scenery –
the same amenities that attract hundreds of thousands of visitors to our
mountains every year.
However, as the fires of 2003 and 2007 have brutally reminded us,
perhaps a permanent change of climate might make mountain residence
unaffordable to many. Property tax increases to pay for fire
abatement (including fire breaks and tree and brush removal) and fire
fighting equipment, along with increased insurance rates and decreased
property values might all add to the financial burden faced by the
residents.
On the other hand, the increased hazards of a drier climate have been
offset in part by aggressive forest management, as hundreds of thousands
of dead and diseased trees have been removed and as individual home
owners have cleared safety zones around their structures. Airborne
equipment – helicopters, DC-10 super-tankers, “super-scooper” aircraft
performed spectacularly well in last month’s fires. But in some cases,
not soon enough. The “super-scoopers,” which skim over the mountain
lakes and grab thousands of gallons of water in a few seconds, were
leased from their owners in Canada. Why Canada? They should
be owned by the US Forest Service or the State of California, and ready
for deployment within a couple of hours of notice. And some eight
thousand California National Guard soldiers and equipment, now in Iraq,
were sorely missed.
In the meantime, the right-wing noise machine is no help at all.
Unfounded attacks on the environmentalists, combined with denials of
climate change and its evident consequences, in FDR’s words, “paralyzes
needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
Copyright 2007 by Ernest Partridge
