Fires Trump Urban Sprawl
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Fires trump urban sprawl
Joe Rodriguez
SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS
October 30, 2003
We were flying at 10,000 feet, approaching the San Bernardino mountains, when a huge plume of smoke appeared on the right side of the airliner. The pilot steered the plane around the smoky thunderhead, giving us a spectacular view of nature's fury and man's malevolence.
"They say an arsonist started this fire," the woman in the seat in front of me said.
Yes, that was the official suspicion, a madman who probably knew he needed only one match to unleash hell in the dry, windy season of the Santa Ana winds.
"That's where I'm staying this weekend, right over there, in Rancho Cucamonga," said the man in the seat next to mine. Cucamonga, the suburb with the sing-song name that rockers Frank Zappa and the Grateful Dead and swing bands of the 1940s put to music, was covered in ashes.
Seconds later we could smell smoke in the cabin. The plane began to shake. Scientists say that big fires create their own weather. I guess that includes turbulence.
By Monday morning, 10 fires from northern Los Angeles to San Diego had burned about 277,000 acres, destroyed 850 homes and killed 13 people. We shouldn't blame arsonists for most of them.
Autumn wildfires in California, like Midwestern floods in spring, happen like clockwork. October comes around and the west wind reverses itself. The deserts in and around the Great Basin in Nevada send their boiling air toward the Pacific Ocean and through lands where it hasn't rained for months. We call them Santa Ana winds, after the Southern California town made famous by them.
The fires in Southern California reminded me of the urban wildfire in 2001 that killed 25 people and destroyed 3,000 homes in the overdeveloped hills above Oakland and Berkeley.
San Jose, where I live, and some other Bay Area cities have restricted hillside development for other reasons – landslides, earthquakes and to provide open space – with another happy result in that we have less firefighting to do. That's not the case in Southern California, where the steep terrain has been increasingly opened to the development of condos, luxury apartments and monster houses.
Why buy in the flats when you can have your dream house, ultimate privacy, a wonderful view and a new freeway down below?
And just in case something goes wrong, as the real estate guy said, a fire truck or paramedic van can reach you in no time. If only that were true.
While local officials and developers were subdividing the hills and mountains, California voters were slaughtering the tax base that helps fund firefighting and rescue efforts. Only 7,000 firefighters were available for the current fire in Southern California. By Monday, officials were asking for 6,000 more from out of state.
Urban sprawl has met the Santa Ana. The wind usually prevails.
I was lucky to find a flight home. The fires had closed the airport for several hours, forcing the cancellation or delay of dozens of flights to and from Southern California. One frustrated passenger waiting for a flight at San Jose's airport asked a newspaper reporter: "How can this break down so badly, with all the technology?"
The answer is obvious: Technology hasn't invented an airliner than can fly safely through fire and smoke, and technology can't reverse the wind or save us from our own stupidity.
Rodriguez can be reached via e-mail at jrodriguezmercurynews.com.