There's a lot of finger-pointing going on. The big fire in San Diego was caused by an idiot hunter who was lost & decided to either light a signal fire, or shoot a flare. 200,000+ acres & almost 20 lives later, it's still burning out of control. He's in custody.
As for the
water soaking the houses, there was some terrible political problem that prevented the tankers in San Diego from ever leaving the ground, so I imagine that was not a "problem" in San Diego. Also, many of our firefighters were up north fighting the fires there, & weren't able to get back down very quickly.
Yes, it's true that the Forest Service tries to leave the forest alone as much as possible, to allow for the natural process of decay & soforth. Makes sense until you have people building communities in & near the forest. Do you blame the trees or the people? I wouldn't build my house on a cliff, then get mad at the cliff when it erodes & destroys my house. I don't know what the answer is.
Other than that, the unusually dry, hot, strong winds we had last weekend & early this week had a lot to do with the quick spread of the fire.
A lot went wrong all at once. That's all.
[ October 30, 2003: Message edited by: Elaine Micheals ]