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Fires ravage acres, homes
By Jacob Harrison
Collegian Reporter
The
multiple wildfires that swept through southern California last
week have reportedly incinerated 743,000 acres of land and forest,
killing at least 20 people, destroying more than 3,570 homes
and is one of the largest fire disasters in the history of the
state.
Hillsdale College junior
Jeff Grana is from Temecula, Calif., in Riverside County, where
one of the 10 major wildfires, identified as the Mountain Fire,
blazed through 10,331 acres and 62 homes and buildings.
Kerry Grana, Jeff’s mother, said that last week Temecula
High School became an evacuation center for fire victims, and,
because their area is “horse country,” the football
field was used to keep horses whose lands were caught in the
wake of the firestorm.
The
flames stopped short just three miles from the Granas’
neighborhood. Many others in the area were not so lucky.
Grana said that more than 2,000 residents fled from their homes
and found shelter at the San Bernardino International Airport
in neighboring San Bernardino County. On Monday, 10 days after
evacuating, residents were finally allowed to return to their
homes and assess damage.
The
westward extent of the San Bernardino fires reached as far as
Claremont, where Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn and
his family lived for 20 years. He said that the northern section
of Claremont extends into the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.
Most of the homes in the area were destroyed.
“We
watched the fires anxiously because they were so near our former
home and because it threatened so many of our friends,”
he said. “One night we saw a CNN reporter standing at a
place we recognized, about 100 yards from our former home. The
fire was burning brightly behind him.”
Hillsdale graduate Meghan McGinness, ’01, lives in southern
Orange County and said that although her home in Dana Point
was untouched by the fire, she was witness to the destructive
aftermath in ravaged northern towns.
“Last Sunday I went to Tustin Ranch, near Newport Beach,
where it was raining ash, like dark snow,” she said. “People
were walking the streets wearing surgical masks, trying to breath
through the thick air.”
Senior Ryan Williams is from San Diego, which lies at the edge
of what became the largest and most destructive of the fires,
called the Cedar Fire. The blaze was apparently started by a
hunter who had fired a signal flare on Oct. 25, sparking a wall
of fire that killed 14 people, among them a firefighter, and
engulfed 2,232 homes and approximately 280,293 acres.
He
said that Californians are no strangers to wildfires, but that
this season’s warm Santa Ana winds, human error, and suspected
arsonists represent only one side of the factors that brought
on the disaster. On the other side, he said, is the problem
of land mismanagement by the federal government.
“Unfortunately, misguided environmentalism has probably
led to the unnecessary destruction of millions of acres of land
across the country. California is only the most recent example
of the modern folly of federal land management.”
A Wall Street Journal article last week cited a 1994 warning
to Congress from the National Commission on Wildfire Disasters
that stated “millions of acres of forest in the western
United States pose an extreme fire hazard from the extensive
build-up of dry, highly flammable forest fuels.” The commission’s
chairman said at the time that the millions of acres of federal
forest in the inland west needed “immediate intervention,
to prevent an environmental and economic disaster.”
Nine years later the prediction has proved valid, and Congress
is now responding, in part with a sudden reconsideration of
the long-shelved legislation called the Healthy Forests bill.
This bill would limit federal restrictions on projects to remove
some of the trees and deadfall throughout national forests.
The bill easily passed in the House last year, but has been
bogged down in the Senate due to environmental concerns.
According
to a recent Los Angeles Times article, opponents of the bill
claim that it panders to the special interests of the logging
industry, and that it does not address problem areas where the
forests meet the suburbs.
California Senator Dianne Feinstein, who helped write the bill,
returned to Washington, D.C. last week to urge its passage before
the Senate.
Arnn said that forestland belonging to the public should be
much more aggressively managed, either through clearing dead
brush or by allowing frequently occurring smaller fires to burn.
“The larger controversy about forest management has been
hard fought in many places in the West,” Arnn said. “If
the brush is not cleared and the small fires put out, then the
undergrowth proliferates and larger fires result.
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