Santa Barbara's Latest Inferno: Daily Uprising Stays Online Through the Ash Storm

We’ve received a handful of emails wondering if we are surviving the latest wildfire to threaten our home in Santa Barbara, California. We’re still covered in a little soot, but the fire department appears to be doing a heroic job. Skies are clearer than they were last night and it looks like we might just survive to dissent another day.

In the meantime, I wanted to pass on a comment made by “Abe” a commenter at the NBC Los Angeles’s website as today’s Daily Dissent:

“If you let no one clean up the dead trees(standing or fallen) or brush, that is what you get. I feel for the children and people that lose their homes, however I’m angered over the so-called “Environmentalists” and “Conservationists” and “Tree-huggers” that we let control our government. Get a life. A True Environmentalist knows that you need to clean it up, and a true Conservationist knows how to maintain it, and Tree-huggers fail to realize that if it’s dead, it needs to come down and that Trees Grow Back. …”

Abe’s point is well taken, although the mountainous area that is burning here in Santa Barbara is so dense with foliage that it would take an army and stockpiles of napalm to clear it.

Nevertheless, there is truth in what Abe is saying beyond his implied call for controlled burning. It’s always disappointing to see homes jeopardized by fires spread from dry brush and other fire hazards on common, public, or government lands, particularly when people are diligent in removing such hazards from their own property in order to protect their homes. In Santa Barbara, both the government and private parties could be a little more diligent about clearing brush and eliminating fire hazards and if the fire comes closer to structures and jumps to dry areas that could have been better maintained to reduce the risk, we hope that Abe and others will remind us that an once of prevention is better than tons of misery.

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