The San Diego wildfires are still burning, but now that the worst of the blazes appears to have passed, and authorities and civilians are congratulating themselves on an orderly, large-scale evacuation response that saw a minimal loss of life, it's time to assign blame. Could these fires have been prevented? Who could have prevented them?
The Washington Post tiptoes around this topic in a comprehensive catch-all in today's edition, suggesting that our appetite for development in fire-prone rural areas is, in the words of Mike Davis, like "building next to leaking gasoline cans." Davis told me this morning in an interview from his home near downtown San Diego that it's not only a development issue, but a Republican-led political culture that traditionally strikes down initiatives to increase funding for better fire protection.
"Two of the major attempts to deal in some structural sense with the causes of fires in San Diego County, which is restricting development and building a county fire department, have been shot down and endlessly postponed by the Ron Roberts types who are now claiming credit for everything," Davis said. "The results obviously are megafires."
San Diego is the only major county in California without a countywide fire department. Wildfires in inland areas here are fought by small volunteer fire brigades, a patchwork system that led to communication mishaps that led to the catastrophe that was the Cedar Fire in 2003.
The North County Times recently noted that between 1979 and 2004, "rural voters had rejected 32 of 50 measures asking them to approve new fire funds." Which makes you wonder why little of the coverage I've seen so far bears any mention of the name Jeff Bowman, the San Diego fire chief who resigned in frustration in 2005 specifically because he felt the city had not properly financed fire prevention. Here's a 2006 op-ed in the Union-Tribune on the topic, reminding readers that "shrill politicians" and idiot shockjocks like Roger Hedgecock actually blamed the firefighters for the deadly results of the Cedar Fire. "Bonds and tax increases designed to improve funding for the Fire-Rescue Department are continually voted down," wrote Richard Halsey.
Then there's the issue of why San Diego and California at large resist embracing the occasional wildfire. Daniel James Brown writes in the L.A. Times opinion section today that "Fire is an integral element of the human and natural ecology of California and, indeed, of most of the nation. Instead of being surprised, traumatized and victimized by fire every few years, we need to learn to expect fire and to manage it more realistically and effectively." Link.
And then you gotta wonder if these particulars even matter. In a morbid bit of foreshadowing, the San Diego Reader last week ran a cover story about the historic drought scenario that most people in San Diego appear blissfully unaware of: "Drought? What drought? If you're a townie, you'd hardly know. If San Diego were Baghdad, we'd be living in the Green Zone, a secure, artificially watered paradise, a gated community sealed off from the real world. " Link.
* This post will be updated with more on these topics and others later today. * Flirck image above by Anechoic Chris.