Rep. Linda Sanchez, the Democratic congresswoman from California’s 39th Congressional District, appeared on MSNBC’s Sept. 1 “Andrea Mitchell Reports” and did just that. She told the show’s fill-in host Tamron Hall that these wildfires have increased in “magnitude” over the years. And she knew why.I've lived in Southern California my whole life. Every year we have fires. Every year homes are lost where they've been built right up to wildlands. There's nothing new about the current fire situation. I can even see the billowing smoke clouds from my home 50 miles away.
“Yeah, it’s really interesting because I’m a native Californian, born and raised here and periodically we would have fought wildfires when I was younger, but nothing of the magnitude that we’ve seen in the last several years,” Sanchez said. “And, obviously, a big contributing factor to that is that we’re in drought condition. We don’t, we aren’t receiving the amount of rainfall that we should or, quite frankly, that in years past we did.”
If anything we actually lose less homes in most fires than we used to thanks to building codes that outlawed shake shingle roofs. Back when shake roofs were commonplace fires used to hopscotch all over neighborhoods as embers flew in the wind and losses were much higher than they might have been.
Yes, we've had a little less rain this year than normal, but with an El Nino setting up, we're likely to more than make up the difference in the next few months.
And in another month or so we'll get hit with Santa Ana winds and there will be more fires. That's what happens around here in the late summer and fall.
And let's not forget the contribution of environmentalists who wouldn't let the forest service thin out dead and diseased trees which made our 2007 fires much worse than they might have been.
Yes, we've had a little less rain this year than normal, but with an El Nino setting up, we're likely to more than make up the difference in the next few months.
And in another month or so we'll get hit with Santa Ana winds and there will be more fires. That's what happens around here in the late summer and fall.
And let's not forget the contribution of environmentalists who wouldn't let the forest service thin out dead and diseased trees which made our 2007 fires much worse than they might have been.
It's not global warming.
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1 comment:
Having lived in the mountains here in Southern California I place much of the blame for these large wildfires on the ENVIRONMENTALISTS and the Sierra Club. They want to keep our forests just like they are and they make it hard for the U.S. Forest Service to do the job they were hired to do by cleaning out old dead and dying trees, removing diseased trees, cleaning up and removing underbrush, etc. When a fire does get started it has more than enough fuel to burn and the fire just gets bigger and bigger. Building a home in a high fire area means that you must assume the risk that you just may lose the home to fire. You may have a beautiful view for a while, and then again you may not have a home or beautiful view.
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