Dear HCN,
Louise Wagenknecht’s
essay on the futility of firefighting (HCN, 5/7/01: The year it
rained money) confirmed my family’s observations during a nearby
fire last year. We watched in horror as 250 firefighters set
pointless backfires, bulldozed miles of roads, and sawed down huge,
rare trees that would not have burned. We saw dozens of planeloads
of retardant dropped to no effect, even in wide swaths across
canyons.
Whimsical evacuation orders abounded.
Homeowners miles upwind of the fire received dire warnings, despite
the fact that a thousand-acre swamp lay in between. At our house,
shift after shift of fire crews spouted lurid descriptions of death
if we didn’t leave at once. Aside from the fact that the fire
wasn’t headed our way, I couldn’t abandon our few trees to the
chain saws and flamethrowers.
I’m still mourning
what was the prettiest canyon in the area, trashed for no reason by
bulldozers and incendiary devices. The fire bosses brushed off
local advice about wind patterns, acting on their own erroneous
predictions.
After the fire was declared out, I
watched crews go around the edges and cut live brush and trees,
presumably to make it look like they’d stopped the fire. They also
took credit for saving a cabin whose surroundings burned before any
firefighters arrived.
Of course, local businesses
had “Thank You Firefighters” signs up. Others agreed that (a)
firefighters do more harm than good, and (b) to laugh off
evacuation orders. Someday this may cost lives, but whose fault
will that be?
Once I regarded firefighters as
brave and hard-working heroes. Now I see the fire establishment as
the classic dysfunctional, unaccountable government
bureaucracy.
Lester
Wood
Coleville, California
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Futile firefighting.
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