The Southern California brushfires are still largely uncontained and a real danger (this picture, from a fire on Palomar Mountain, is from the Los Angeles Times), but life seems to be returning to normal for many - if their houses have not been destroyed. My parents are well, the threat to the coastal cities seems over (for now at least). Streets and supermarket shelves are empty, but their guests - cousins from Germany who've been planning this week-long trip to California for years and years! - had the Torrey Pines Golf Course all to themselves yesterday, a sort of compensation...President Bush is flying in today, and the recriminations are sure to flare up as the fires subside. Not just because the more Bush does for Southern California (and there's no reason not to expect a lot: the area is full of Republicans and wealth), the greater the contrast with the abandonment of the victims of Hurricane Katrina becomes, but also because San Diego is among America's most poorly-run cities. Already there are rumblings about insufficient investment in firefighting equipment (unfathomable considering the firestorm the city suffered through just four years ago) and poor coordination of fire fighting units - San Diego County amazingly doesn't have its own fire department!
In the background is the sad fact that half of the area's National Guard are in Iraq.Following this from three thousand miles away has been a frustrating experience, though I was glad to be the one to tell my parents that the evacuation order for their part of Del Mar (which they had not quite got around to following) had been lifted - viva the internet! I'm enormously relieved that the fires' charge toward the coast has stopped, but feel a kind of vicarious survivor's guilt toward those whose lives have been destroyed as the fires turned north and east. (Above a view of Rancho Bernardo, courtesy of the New York Times.)
After living through a harrowing bush fire season in Victoria, when Melbourne seemed for a time under assault from all sides, there's also a sense of déjà vu. (The California brush fire season has only just begun, of course.) In the last year I've become aware of the rising frequency of natural disasters, probably affected by global warming - but also of the place of fire in natural ecosystems like Southern California, many of whose native plants have seeds whose shells break open only in the heat of fire, and others which start fires and spread them.
Living on this planet's no picnic. Why did we - Californians at least - ever think otherwise? Or maybe we never really thought about it at all before. (Someone interviewed by the San Diego Union said of the conflagrations: "They say there are just two kinds of weather in San Diego: nice and nicer. This is just weird.")
