Arson Or "Playing With Fire?"

LA Times photo: Lawrence K. Ho

Our local fire still burns and the person who set it isn't caught. Fifty miles or so to the north, the Buckwheat fire in Agua Dulce fire is out, 21 homes are burned, and the person who set it has confessed. And that's just the start of the problem.

Prosecutors grappled on Wednesday with what charges, if any, to file against the 10-year-old boy who admitted he set a fire last week that charred more than 38,000 acres and destroyed 21 homes in northern Los Angeles County.

On the ranch northeast of Santa Clarita where the boy's parents helped care for horses, people who knew him said he had no history of problems and was distraught about the destruction.

"He's a child, and I certainly believe that he had no malice and I absolutely believe it was accidental," said Denise Tomey, executive director of Carousel Ranch, which offers equestrian therapy for physically and mentally disabled children.

The boy had no connection to the program but had lived in a trailer on the property in the Agua Dulce area for about a year with his parents, one of whom is a ranch caretaker.

Tomey called the boy's family "peaceful." (LA Times)

The boy admits to "playing with matches" while the winds howled around him. I remember playing with matches -- heck, even playing with blowtorches we created with my mom's hairspray and a lighter -- and as I recall, not one of my friends ever dropped out of this foolishness, saying, "Momma said ...." So I'm sympathetic, to a point.

It's the howling winds that get me. You have got to really want to start a fire to try it when the winds are gusting to 80 or 100 miles an hour, so I wonder at this boy's innocence.

Juvenile Hall is too much for a 10 year old, and would probably set arson into his genes. I'd rather see a process that intimidates: Statements, standing before a judge, fearing deeply ... then receiving mercy.

And then ten years or so of Reaganesque "trust but verify."

According to the LAT, the local record is mixed on youngsters who start fires:

Earlier this year, Los Angeles County prosecutors refused to file charges against two teenagers who touched off a blaze that charred 160 acres in the Hollywood Hills. The boys, who were visiting Los Angeles from Linden, Ill., were playing with a lighter in the back of the Oakwood apartments when they accidentally set twigs on fire. The flames spread up the hillside through deep vegetation. The boys, who turned themselves in to authorities, were not prosecuted.

But in Orange County, a 12-year-old girl was arrested Oct. 22 for allegedly setting a seven-acre fire in Anaheim. She remains in the custody of the Orange County Probation Department.

So the prosecutors will grapple, trying to look into the head of a 10 year old -- and we all know, for all their innocence, that 10 year olds are accomplished liars.

The other problem to grapple with is the civil liability that's now on this kid's parents' shoulders. By law, the couple, who live in a trailer on the ranch and serve as its caretakers, are liable for all the expenses of fighting the fire and replacing the losses of those whose homes burned.

This law's harsh application -- the kid did it; you're liable -- has always unsettled me. What if the parents knew something was twisted in the kid and had already spent thousands of dollars seeking treatment? Shouldn't that differentiate them from parents who just blew off their kid?

And what if the kid was innocent of malice? Why then are the parents guilty of a higher crime?

So here's a family that because of one moment's indiscretion by someone to young to have discretion has their lives hanging in the balance. Will normalcy ever return, or are they at the trailhead of a long, hellish trail?

Greenie Insanity And The Santiago Fire

Rick Moran at Right Wing Nuthouse, who's opinions I value, has called me a idiot. I'm not sure if I still value his opinions quite as much ...

Here's what he said, writing of the rush to score political points as the SoCal wildfires burned:

It didn’t used to be like this. No one would have dreamed of trying to politicize tragedy prior to the presidency of George Bush. But we’re in a different political ballgame now with no boundaries and few rules to live by. So we can expect this kind of idiocy from both sides from now on.

Mea culpa. I did work to score a political point or two by (very gingerly) comparing the situation faced by the Superdome evacuees to the experience of the evacuees at Qualcomm. Says Moran of that:

First of all, anyone who tries to draw parallels between a Hurricane and a fire is an idiot.

There's that "idiot" word again. But there were differences between Qualcomm and Superdome that cannot be explained by the differences between a hurricane and a firestorm, which I admitted were profound.

And it's not about rich or poor, or the width of streets or the availability of transportation. It's about an effective local government in San Diego, and how sharply that contrasted with a seriously dysfunctional (and since re-elected!) local government in New Orleans. (To his credit, Moran also make this point.)

Ray Nagin's re-election stands as the most racist political act in this country in all the years since the Civil Rights Act was passed.

Moran took a shot or two at folks who harped on the enviros during the current fire, saying it was too early to cast those stones. I haven't thrown those stones ... yet ... even though you can attribute at least some of the blame for the recent ferocity of fires on them.

Now, here comes the end of "not yet;" here come the stones.

It turns out, enshrined bureaucratic environmentalism did play a role in making the fire that threatened our home harder to fight. My friend Jim eagle-eyed this, way down in an OC Register story today:

Concerns over contaminated water supplies due to runoff from an abandoned silver mine kept helicopters from dropping water on flames along the top ridge along the northeast corner of the blaze.

Regulation run amok! Bureaucrats gone wild!

Because there is an old silver mine up on Saddleback Mountain, one can assume, can't we, that silver is a naturally occurring element in our local environment?

And if the water were to be dropped, it would land on ground that was parched bone-dry -- because that's why we're having a fire, right?

And if the soil is bone dry, what water that isn't evaporated by the flames and happens to pick up a silver atom or two will be sucked up by the now-bare soil, right?

So if the ridiculously tiny counts of silver are back in the soil, aren't they right back where they came from?

And if it rains like cats and dogs (Puhleeze God!) soon, and all that soil washes down the mountain, won't it be diluted by cat-and-dog volumes of water, until it's so diluted you could barely measure it?

In case you're confused, the answer to all those questions is "YES!" In the face of towering flames, bureaucratic idiots (to borrow a term from Moran) are enforcing regulations about parts per trillion instead of facing realities about burning homes in the hundreds (well, not here at least, thank God, but it's a nice turn of phrase).

So, dear bureaucrat, how many more tons of greenhouse gases were belched into the atmosphere because you denied the helicopters their water? And, in case you forgot that there are real human beings involved here, how many more hours will firefighters be placed at risk -- all because you're worried about concentrations of silver that are surely smaller than what Incredible Wife picks up through her skin when she slips on a silver bracelet?

So, Rick, all apologies, but I'm not waiting another moment. All barrels blazing here!

Sunday Scan

This is probably going to be more of a Fire Scan than a Sunday Scan, because there's something about flames and smoke on the hillsides I've hiked not that far from myhome that focuses my attention away from other news.

Heroes From Cocoons

My computer is being rebuilt this weekend, so I can't load videos to Blogger (don't ask). Here, then, is the link to an NBC clip that tells the story behind the picture I posted a few days ago of the metallic cocoons that saved 8 firefighters in the Santiago Canyon fire. (By all accounts, it's 8, not 12, which is the number NBC reports.)

It's just over three minutes, so please watch it -- if for no other reason than (1) you'll see some heroes defiantly facing down death and (2) you'll see a seasoned journalist show emotion and admit, a little self-consciously, that she prayed at that moment.

Hot Air

This John Trever cartoon captures the yakking and attacking that has followed the shellacking California got from these fires.

The Hill caught Pinky Reed claiming a global warming connection (for the moment, until pressed, when he wimped back, sniveling):

“One reason why we have the fires in California is global warming,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters Tuesday, stressing the need to pass the Democrats’ comprehensive energy package.

Moments later, when asked by a reporter if he really believed global warming caused the fires, he appeared to back away from his comments, saying there are many factors that contributed to the disaster.

Under the categories "Crime and Corruption" and "Terror Psyops," hyper-paranoid blog Aftermath News apparently was busy making up the thoughts of San Diego evacuees:

Instead of praising Bush, evacuees said it is important to remember that the Bush administration censored reports on global warming. In San Diego County, the leaves and grasses were extremely dry from drought, creating prime conditions for fast spreading fires.

None of these evacuees are quoted by name, nor does Aftermath mention that it's the land the enviros fought to keep out of development, along with land owned and managed by the state and the feds, that were the source of the tinder.

The Latino news service Prensa Latino picks up the global warming rant, helped along by that always objective and trustworthy alliance of Wobblies and Warmies:

Amy Goodman, of Democracy Now, said over this radio and TV network that fires extend from the Mexican border to Santa Barbara, the most devastating fires in San Diego County and the Governor has declared a state of emergency.

Bill McKibben, a leading environmentalist has found that wildfires are related to global warming. This is the kind of disaster that we see more and more of as we begin to change the basic physics and chemistry of the planet we live on, he said in an interview with Amy Goodman.

One of the San Diego authorities noted this is the driest in at least ninety years. Another scientist, Tom Swetnam has found that global warming has increased temperatures in the West about one degree, and that's caused four times more fires.

Is there anything to make of this? Dr. Ricky Rood of wunderground thinks the conclusions are getting way ahead of the facts. First post:

The Santa Ana winds are not being caused by climate change. They’ve been around longer than Santa Ana. It’s wind falling down a hill, which warms the air, lowers the relative humidity, and sucks up moisture from the ground. Bad stuff for fire fighters. The fact that the fires are so damaging is that they are in places where people have built in very dry and very vulnerable places. And for the most part, people seem to set the fires one way or another. It’s mostly a land-use and land-management issue.

If, if, if there is anything to do with climate change it would be that the extended drought has warmer temperatures than similar droughts in the past, and hence, drying is worse. I cited some research earlier that made such a argument in a way that has some substance.

Second Rood quote, from OLTN Weather Update:

There have also been papers which make a compelling argument that wild fires in the western U.S. are increasing in intensity and duration. In the paper of Westerling et al. (Science, 2006), the conclusion is drawn that this is directly related to snow melt occurring earlier in the year, a hotter and drier forest, and hence, a longer burning season. Plus they isolate the impact to be at mid-elevations in the Rockies, and hence, relatively free of land-use changes. While many newspapers reported that this work showed an increase of wild fires due to climate change, I quote directly from their paper: “Whether the changes observed in western hydroclimate and wildfire are the result of greenhouse gas-induced global warming or only an unusual natural fluctuation is beyond the scope of this work”.

In other words, a little science, a lot of jumping to conclusions, and an unhealthy dose of hysteria -- the Warmie formula for mixing up a batch of "news."

Pensions and Pumpers

We were worried all week about the amount of equipment that would be available to fight our fire, given that significant firefighting resources were (rightfully) focused on LA and San Diego counties, where more homes were threatened than here. Rightfully or not, the OC Register lead editorial today makes a good point:

[F]irefighter unions are powerful, and fire budgets in recent years have been stressed as agencies, such as the Orange County Fire Authority, have expanded pensions. The more the agencies spend on salary and benefits, the less will be available for the latest equipment and other capital expenditures. Those who always call for more spending for public safety aren't doing taxpayers a service – no government agency ever has the amount of money it would like to have, and wise public officials understand the need to balance the many demands on the treasury.

A few years back, the OC Board of Supervisors lost their collective spines in the face of employee unions and approved a new pension plan that we have no hope of financing in the real world.

We love our fire fighters all the more after the last week ... but we still hate their greedy pension scheme.

Taking the Union's Side

Not surprisingly, the LA Times has chosen to megaphone the union's rhetoric in its lead story today, Shortages added fuel to OC fire. The main shortage, it appears, was union members.

Like most departments in the region, the Orange County Fire Authority was ready for trouble. Forecasts called for humidity in the single digits and hot Santa Ana winds roaring in from the desert.

[OC Fire Chief Chip] Prather put 30 extra crews on duty, roughly 100 firefighters. They added to the typical staffing of about 70 crews. He was paying firefighters overtime to have engines staffed and ready to go.

The size of those crews was one way that Orange County fell below the national standard. Most of the county's engines were staffed with three people. Four per engine is the voluntary minimum standard from the National Fire Protection Assn., a private organization that writes fire safety guidelines.

Crews with three firefighters work more slowly than larger crews, according to a study by the Insurance Services Organization, a national group that evaluates fire departments.

"When you lose one person on the crew, you're sacrificing safety," said Afrack Vargas, a spokesman for the California State Firefighters' Assn. "You're sacrificing another set of eyes. You're sacrificing another strong back to help in the incident. It makes a difficult situation that much more difficult."

Our cartoonist who leads of this column should have added "Union Shills" to the wind machines that are attempting to fan a new fire from the one that's burning up in the hills. Every union tries to write rules that require more union workers, from nurses on the hospital floor to machinists on the factory floor, and the fire unions are no different.

How obviously self-serving is the union argument? Far be it from the LA Times to ask the question:

Orange County, the sixth-wealthiest county in the state, has an annual firefighting budget of about $260 million. The Fire Authority has roughly one firefighter for every 1,100 people in the county's coverage area. But that figure climbs dramatically -- one firefighter for every 1,800 residents -- if only full-time, professional firefighters are counted.

By comparison, Ventura County has twice as many firefighters per capita, approaching 900. Los Angeles County's ratio of one firefighter per 1,500 residents is about 16% stronger than Orange County's. (emphasis added)

The LAT fails to point out that Ventura County is ranked higher in per capita and household income than Orange County ... but let's not let fact get in the way of reporting.

Besides, what does truck manpower have to do with this:

Prather said that [calling up overtime fire fighters] left the Fire Authority with 15 more engine companies than usual, in addition to help from other departments if things got bad in Orange County. He thought that would be enough.

It wasn't.

The Santiago fire broke out 13 hours later. By then, the 11 city fire departments in Orange County had also dispatched substantial forces to Malibu. That deprived Prather of the backup he would normally have relied on.

Plus, the state committed to buying 150 new engines after the 2003 fires, but so far has only ordered 19, none of which have been delivered.

But it's all about not enough union workers. Who will be eligible for generous union pensions. And pay union dues to support their union bureaucracies.

These Nerve-Rattling Wildfires

Here's an email I sent out earlier today:

Friends and family:

It’s been a worrying several days as we’ve watched the Santiago Canyon fire spread, threatening neighborhoods and burning down homes in areas just five or ten from our home. The last few days have been a God-send, with the winds dying down and the humidity inching up to about 14%.

The danger is still real, however. Were the winds to pick up and blow in our direction, the threat would increase dramatically. One thing to keep in mind, though, is that every house that has been lost has been older or remote and surrounded by trees – no new subdivision homes have burned because of our more fire-proof construction and the modifications they make to vegetation around the edges to give the firefighters more opportunity to knock down the fires.

Please look at this map of the Santiago Canyon fire. If you look at the bottom right, you’ll see a little triangle formed by two green lines coming up from the bottom – that’s the northern edge of our community, about 2.5 miles north of our home. You can see how each day the fire is spreading more and more in our general direction each day – but it’s still north and west of us, and the strong winds typically are east to west, not northeast to southwest, so that’s good … for us anyway.

Please keep us, the firefighters, the people at more risk, and the people who have lost homes in your prayers.

Here's a recent update from the Register:

The fire was making some moves toward the south – and communities such as Rancho Santa Margarita and Coto de Caza. Firefighters were hoping to turn it back before then, and were holding a line along Ortega Highway.

The hellish Santa Ana winds that drove the fire earlier in the week had gone slack, but the flames were still moving fast as they devoured the forest and swept uphill. A crew of firefighters was forced into retreat overnight after the fire made a sudden rush up the mountain slope.

Not wanting to get trapped by the flames with only an uphill escape route, the firefighters pulled back around 6 p.m. They returned several hours later, after the fire had calmed down.

“It’s really dangerous to be uphill on a fire, trying to fight it,” said Ken Frederick, a spokesman at the National Interagency Fire Center and a 13-year firefighter. “You just don’t want that fire below you.”

Those fire fighters are just amazing! God bless 'em!

Here's a hot on-the-Internet update from the LA Times about Silverado Canyon, one of the rare funky areas in OC, where narrow lanes wind along creeks and slopes are lined with rustic homes:

The Santiago fire raged this afternoon on Pine Canyon Ridge, with authorities estimating that the blaze was less than an hour from reaching Silverado Canyon. Firefighters scrambled to coat homes in the far reaches of the five-mile canyon with fire-resistant white gel and evacuate dozens of residents as thick plumes of smoke billowed into the sky.

Authorities are no longer allowing residents, media or even some firefighters to go more than three miles into the canyon. Nearby, a sign outside a community center reads, "God please save our canyon."

It looks like a good chance that there's going to be more heartbreak before this is over.

Photo: Bruce Chambers, OC Register

We're Still Here, But One Arsonist Isn't

Speaking of the flag he had just loaded into his pickup, Jess Morris said, "You can always try and find one thing to hang onto." Morris' 136-acre ranch in Modjeska Canyon was destroyed by fire yesterday. (OC Register)

We're still here, even as the threatening Santiago Canyon Fire grows and containment shrinks. Fortunately, most of the growth is to the northeast, into the Cleveland National Forest and away from us.

But one worrying arm is heading south, slowly towards us. I came home at 8:30 last night from a client's board meeting, and at the stop sign a couple blocks from our house, I could see a wall of flames in the not-too-distant distance, looking decidedly evil against the black night sky.

All of this worry, danger, effort and expense is the work of one person -- almost certainly a man. OC Fire Chief Chip Prager told the media yesterday that the fire was set in three locations by someone who understood fire dynamics and knew how to use starting points and wind to ensure a large, difficult-to-fight fire.

They're offering $70,000 for info; I know plenty of folks who would contribute to make it much more -- folks who aren't troubled by reading this:

Amid worries of new blazes adding to the firestorm already afflicting the region ... police reported shooting and killing another arson suspect after chasing him out of scrub behind Cal State San Bernardino. ...

The confrontation that ended in the shooting death started about 6 p.m. Tuesday when San Bernardino university police spotted a man in a rural area of flood channels and scrub near the campus. University police tried to detain the man, but he got into his car and fled, authorities said. When he began to ram officers' vehicle, they shot him.

The suspect is described as a 27-year-old man with a home address in Arizona. Sheriff's investigators will search his impounded pickup truck pending a search warrant, Lt. Scott Patterson of the San Bernardino Police Department said this afternoon. (LA Times)

I was thinking this morning that California must attract arsonists from all over America because it really is the ideal place for nutcases who want to cause the kind of grief we've been suffering through -- and there you have it, an Arizonan coming our way to get his sick jollies.

Nervous

Yesterday evening, as I was getting the mail and breathing some of the smoke you see in this NASA photo, my neighbor of 16 years P. walked by with her dog Paris (named long, long before anyone had ever heard of Paris Hilton).

"How are you?" she asked.

"Nervous," I replied. I had just driven home and was shocked to see how far south (towards us) the Santiago Canyon fire had spread. It had jumped out of its namesake canyon and had burned Modjeska and Silverado Canyons, and was now burning in our direction along the face of Saddleback Mountain, less than 10 miles from our home.

Meanwhile, an ominous gray cloud completely smothered the entire southern sky, evidence that the new fire in Camp Pendleton was spreading badly.

Here's the Santiago Canyon fire map as of this morning (click to enlarge). Our home is in Coto de Caza, south-south-east of the fire. That big blob of dark green you see just to the right of us is a wilderness park (i.e., dry coastal sage scrub up the wazoo) and the light green to the east of that is the Cleveland National Forest (i.e., much more of the same).

Coastal sage scrub is an oily plant that explodes into flame when fires hit it, so you can see why any further southern movement of the already terribly destructive Santiago Canyon fire is very worrying.

Just off the map to the south is Camp Pendleton, where the OC Register reports today:

While firefighters battled the Santiago fire overnight, another blaze swept across Camp Pendleton just south of the Orange County line. Flames lapped on both sides of the I-5 freeway, forcing officials to close down the thoroughfare in both directions shortly after 2 a.m. from Cristianitos Road to Harbor Drive, according to California Highway Patrol.

"It's not looking good right now," said Camp Pendleton Fire Inspector Bill Gick. "For the morning commute, you can forget about it. The freeway is closed."

To the north of Pendleton, thousands of acres of coastal sage scrub spread across Rancho Mission Viejo, an old Spanish land grant recently approved for the development of 14,000 new houses, and tie into that same wilderness park to the east of my home.

So we're praying that the fire to the north and the fire to the south don't join. If they do, there's about 100 yards of houses -- four or five rows -- between us and the parched wildlands beyond. I don't know what I'm asking for when I ask for your "thoughts," but I do know what I'm asking when I ask for your prayers, and I'm asking for them. Not for us, but for everyone throughout SoCal who has to answer "nervous" when asked how they're feeling.

All images courtesy of OC Register.

A Day In The Smoke

You might have heard me today updating Hugh Hewitt on the air about the Santiago Canyon fire that was threatening Foothill Ranch.

I spent the day just a mile or two downwind from the fire, watching through plate glass windows as great columns of black smoke rush skyward, and smelling the smoke that breached the filters of our building's AC units, turning eyes red and throats sore. Tough, huh?

Anyway, what I shared with Hugh was the oddness of commuting home on thoroughfares just three or four blocks from where fire fighters were struggling -- successfully! -- to save homes, all of us sitting in our air conditioned mobile cocoons, like we do every day ... even though this was hardly a day like the others. It was strange, very strange.

What I forgot to mention to Hugh and his listeners was that this fire would have been much more interesting a few years ago, before the Marines abandoned the El Toro Marine Air Station. Today the now empty ammunition dump went up in smoke. I imagine the Marines would have put up one heck of a fight to keep the fire from those munitions.

Here at home, we're not under any risk from the current fires, but there's about 30 miles of dry brush starting just a couple blocks east of us that runs all the way across the Santa Ana Mountains to Riverside County. We know that if a fire were to break out, the fire fighters are over-extended and we couldn't depend on a rapid response.

So we're praying ... for the victims who have lost their homes, for those who sit in fear tonight, for the fire fighters and, yes, for our neighborhood's safety too.

One more thing: I'm quite certain they will catch the @#$%&! who set the Santiago Canyon fire. The doofus set three separate fires along the Foothill Corridor Toll Road. Thing is, the Foothill Corridor uses transponders and cameras, so every single car that was on the road at the time the fire was set was recorded. I'm sure the cops are running the plates and knocking on doors as you read this.

What an idiot!