California Burning

It must be terrifying for so many people in California. But kudos to governor for evacuating almost a million people out of harm's way. The test as to whether this will be New Orleans 2.0 will be the follow-through from the Federal, state, and local government and the response from the insurance companies. All of those liberterians who saw their homes go up in flames have just be mugged by reality and may now have a little more fondness for what the government can do. I'm sure that Hollywood will also mount a fund-raiser as well.

The tribulations facing California tonights reminds me of the challenges that faced my ancestors in more than a century ago. Death in the form of fire would race over the dry bristle. The shifting line of fire would sometimes cover 30 miles or more. In 1873, in Saline County, Nebraska, the wind swept the smoke of a great fire toward a schoolhouse. One mother, against the teacher’s most earnest objections, took her children and those related to her away. The ten children tried to run before the fire and fell, one after the other, the mother too in her efforts to save them. The teacher and pupils who remained with her were safe on a nearby plowed field. Ironically, the schoolhouse was untouched by the fire.

I had a glimse into what Californians are enduring in 1983. A fire in the apartment complex where I was living that took the life of a seven-month-old girl in the unit beneath me and left the father critically injured. My cat Rex woke me up at about two a.m. and I remember the utter horror of the moment when I saw billowing clouds of orange come towards me from the first floor, a horror that was compounded when I had to fight through thick, black smoke in an apartment that had no sprinklers or alarms. Little Jaclyn Wallace’s clothes, toys, and crib lay twisted in a puddle of ashes and glass. I was amazed that the soot and the stench penetrated everything, through cupboards and under and between stacks of clothes.

You can always count on Fox News to spread misinformation.

For the second straight day, Fox News stood virtually alone in advancing thinly supported speculation to raise fears that the wildfires ravaging California are not the result of a confluence of arid heat and high winds but were set deliberately by al Qaeda terrorists bent on destroying America.

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Fox_hypes_Qaeda_plotted_fires_theory_1025.html

The "facts" in this case is a four-year old memo from the FBI. No doubt al Qaeda was responsible for Hurricane Katrina as well.

But it may be that with the hindsight of history, the fires in California are a sideshow. The more scary event occurred before a congresisonal committee this morning where Condi "mushroom cloud" Rice announced new financial sanctions on Iran, even while Turkey is poised to invade Iraq.

The Bush administration today imposed a series of new sanctions on Iran to punish Tehran for weapons proliferation and supporting terrorism throughout the Middle East.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-usiran26oct26,1,7832443.story?coll=la-headlines-nation&track=crosspromo

I doubt that the factual basis for taking this action is any stronger than is the factual basis for assuming that al Qaeda is responsible for global warming. The administration has demonstrated its eagerness and shamelessness in inventing facts to align with policy as they did in the run up to the war in Iraq. So I am hoping that Congress has the stomach to ask the hard questions before committing our troops to yet another front in the "war on terror".