What access should amount to is, I suppose, what the argument might be about. Private land holders do have their homes at stake. However, it’s not automatically clear to me that a private home owner’s claim ought to trump the public’s. And, as Richard has argued before, living in these fragile areas is an aesthetic choice. Looks like there are plenty of risks and responsibilities to go around for all involved.

Only one thing is certain to me, if I had a home in that area, I’d be opting for maximum defensive measures (brush clearing, fire retardant roof, etc), leaving optimums as a nice theory for someone else to study. It’s be one of those times when it’d be worth it to throw the book at those things I could control. And, I’d be a really bad neighbor to anyone who did much less. Borrowing the notion of vaccine, protection for one easily translates into protection for others. Herd immunity as it were. Guess that’s why I’m happy to be a flatlander.

I am always impressed by the local news coverage, especially with the helicopter camera video footage. You could see the houses which burned were completely surrounded by large trees and brush. While some homes that did not burn, had a fire-break around the house.

The people in Malibu need to hire an architect I saw television recently. The architect was showing a house in Lake Arrowhead he designed to be fire-proof. The house had no exposed cracks or crevices for embers to get caught under and start a burn. He also used fire-resistant building materials. The house he showed was in the middle of a bunch of homes which had burned down during the recent fire in Lake Arrowhead.

RLC, yeah, the bonfire thing. Good lord. I think it’s reasonable to shoot people stupid enough to do such a thing. (I’m kidding. Sort of.)

For about a minute on Saturday afternoon, when I was up at the command center, somebody let slip that they were looking at arson. But then yesterday, CNN suggested that the investigators had concluded that it really was the bonfire at the end of the road. This morning’s Martha Groves article seems to suggest they aren’t so sure again.

http://www.latimes.com/la-me-politics26nov26,0,226205.story?coll=la-home-center

In Northwestern Montana, the Robert fire of 2003 burned nearly 60,000 acres, and was started by stupid, drunk kids in the hills with a bonfire and a keg.

Since I live it a high fire area, I’m not down with Mike D.’s POV per se. If you want to get technical, I guess you could say I live in 2 high fire areas, if one includes the family cabin in West Glacier. But in both areas, we take just about every possible precaution—as do our neighbors.

It’s the people—both developers and residents—who have the arrogance to believe that they hold the high card in any game of poker with the natural world who cause me to have extremely angry and vengeful thoughts. In addition to causing the County and state a pile of money, they endanger the rest of us who live nearby.

Unfortunately, this all calls for far stiffer building regulations. But even that won’t fix things, as there isn’t the political will to make the regulations retroactive.

And can we say something about the stupidity of local residents (I mean the whole area – not just Malibu)? This fire apparently had a human origin. Not Arson but reports of people “Camping”and setting Bonfires. Bonfires? During a Santa Ana? I don’t know. Some people make you wonder if the creationists are right. I mean Evolution?