California Wildfires

2006 Wildfire from downtown Simi Valley, California.
Thomas Wold photo

I have lived in California on and off for many years.

I am very familiar with the Santa Ana winds--the tinder-dry conditions of the forests and hills in the Fall--and the wildfires that sweep over the land every year.

The smoke in the entire huge Central Valley all summer of 2008 has made breathing bad and visibility terrible--and the record setting heat waves have made most of us living here sometimes wish we lived somewhere else--but we have personally been spared the devastation now occurring in the Santa Barbara hills and east of Los Angeles.

As the California population grows and the land near towns becomes hillside villages--pretty, yes--but dangerously tempting for wildfire--we expect more will lose their homes and belongings.

If the swarming human populations do not limit their growth there will be more and more natural disasters--this is obvious--and it takes no blogger to sound the alarm.

Tomasito

...