 Thousands Flee As Brush Fires Rake California
Homes fall like tinder in blazes
Wind-whipped fires blacken S. California
“Driven by hot gusty
winds from the desert, at least a dozen brush fires roared out of control today
across Southern California, damaging or destroying hundreds of homes and
forcing tens of thousands of people to evacuate.
The fires spread ominously all day, leaping canyons and
brush-covered hills, consuming expensive homes and trailer parks alike in six
counties from Ventura to the Mexican border. A smoky pall wafted over downtown
Los Angeles, where ashes fell like snow all day.”
Sound Familiar? Well this isn’t 2007 we are talking about.
The previous two paragraphs were taken from a New York Times article dated Oct
28, 1993.
By the end of the week, Santa Ana winds had driven 14 fires
across five Southern California counties, destroying more than 500 homes and causing
over $1Billion worth of damage.
The list of the damaged areas are almost a mirror copy of
the areas that were affected in this past week’s fire.
Now as then, some of the fires were blamed on arsonists. “Los
Angeles County sheriff's deputies today arrested a 35-year-old transient from
Pasadena who they said had set off the Altadena blaze when a campfire he had
built in the hills Tuesday night jumped out of control in winds of up to 60
miles an hour. They identified him as Andres Huang, and he was being held today
on $7,500 bail, charged not with arson but with unlawfully causing a fire.”
Now the only question is how did this happen again? After
the last fires, all the politicians were promising new measures would be
implemented to prevent this in the future. It appears that that they were full
of hot air. The new C-130 airplanes were never fitted with their water tanks,
and the new helicopters were never delivered. Even the simple plan to speed up
the brush removal was never fully implemented.
It is sad to say, that those killed as well as the thousands
of people have lost their homes could have been prevented if only the authorities
would have learnt from their past mistakes.
Let us pray and hope that this time will be different, and
many more lives won’t be needlessly lost.
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