Cool fire?

There are two wildlife management areas on the highway going toward the family farm in Georgia. One day there were brush fires burning on them. I stopped and asked a ranger who was casually observing them, what was going on. He said it was a controlled burn and was a “cool fire.” Cool fire? Sounds like a 60s R&B band. He said that the brush would burn but the trees would not. That way they could guard against brush fires. Now how you get a fire to burn cool is beyond me. But the forest did not burn even though the base of the trees were singed. However, I know that if I tried this, I would burn down the whole county.

First I called my relatives who live in the LA MSA to see if they were all right. They are but have friends who were affected. Second, I thought about the cool fires of Jones County when I saw the horrors of the LA wildfire where the environmentalists have prevented burning of underbrush. There is a lot of finger pointing amongst all the hand wringing. One side is saying that the fires are a result of climate change. The other side is blaming state and local priorities. Of course, if the cause is climate change, I presume that there is nothing one can do to prevent the fires. But one could still limit the damage with the right policies. If the reason that the fire is not being contained is due to incompetence or priorities, the question is whether those will be addressed. At this writing, the fire is zero contained. Why? We all know that there is going to be a fire season in California. Why weren’t they prepared? Here are some of the reasons.

1. The fire hydrants ran out of water. But why?
2. The mayor cut the fire department’s budget $17.6 million. The fire chief said that they were understaffed, under-resourced ad underfunded.
3. A key reservoir was taken offline for maintenance (during fire season?)
4. One of the firefighting aircraft was disabled after colliding with a drone
5. The CEO of LA’s department of water and power responsible for the water pumping facilities and hydrant system was incompetent and focused on “advancing the department into 100% clean energy”. She was also focused on equity and social justice to “right the wrongs that we’ve done in the past from an infrastructure perspective.” I guess the fire hydrants and reservoirs in LA are racist.
6. The fire chief who was hailed as the first LGBTQ person in that position spent some of her limited funds to create a DEI bureau. She wants to hire more women and gay firefighters. The DEI head said that “You want to see somebody that responds to your house, your emergency whether it’s a medical emergency or a fire call, that looks like you.” Huh? How would they know to send a bunch of elderly black bald male firefighters with white beards to my house?
7. The water from the Sierra Nevada snow pack doesn’t get stored and is flushed out into the Pacific Ocean.
8. The state’s priority is to focus on green energy rather than renovating the aging LA water infrastructure.
9. Too little money is spent on wildfire mitigation with $2.6 billion while $14.7 billion is allocated for clean energy transition.

And the venerable Maxine Waters blames the rich for the fires. Excuse me – the rich? Yes she said “The first thing we’ve got to understand is, services cost money and we should be willing to get the richest people in this country, the richest one percent that is protected, make sure they pay their fair taxes so that we can have the money to provide the services.” Does this mean she wants the rich Californians to be taxed more or is she saying that the rest of the country should subsidize California? Regardless, the statement is typical Maxine Waters except she forgot to say that either the fire was racist or racism was the blame for the lack of containment. The state has a budget of $300 billion. You would think that they would be taking a hard look at their spending priorities. BTW how is that $100 billion bullet train coming?

It will be interesting to see if anyone pays the price for this debacle. The mayor, the fire chief, the city council, the state government are all the blame. They all should either resign or be fired. If they stay in power, then the citizens have endorsed their priorities of green energy and DEI over safety. Another interesting question is what will be the impact on Gavin Newsom’s presidential ambitions?

But thank goodness for the cool fires of Jones County, GA.