Palm Springs Mt Center fire (4459)

I saw this fire on the national news this morning. It's looking pretty bad. The relationship the West has with fire has long fascinated me, as I've never lived anyplace where you had this hanging over you. We get fires from time to time, but they never approach anything like this. More often, at least in Illinois, we're setting fires to maintain a prairie. I've been near a few fires during western trips, and I have a friend who lives near Denver and has had a couple of close calls the last few years, but it's hard for me to imagine having this go on where you live.

You get used to it. I've had to leave work once as fire was racing down to the parking lot, and have had coworkers who've lost their homes. Unfortunately, Westerners continue to build too far into the wilderness, continue to refuse to pay for adequate fire protection, continue to want pretty rather than defensible space around our structures...

And, of course, I'm sure they demand assistance to help them rebuild in the exact same places with the exact same practices. It's the same story in the east with river valleys and flooding, or along the coast with hurricanes. These are lessons we never manage to learn, as we're convinced we'll beat it eventually.