In the Los Angeles Times, Bettina Boxall, Meghan Daum, and Christopher Hawthorne try to make sense of last week's destructive wildfires in Southern California.
"More recently, on the very eve of the new firestorms, county supervisors endorsed a so-called 'shelter in place' strategy that will permit developers to build in the rugged, high-fire-risk backcountry without having to provide the secondary roads needed to ensure safe evacuation. Instead residents would be encouraged to stay in their 'fire resistant' homes while fire-fighters defended the perimeter of their cul-de-sac. As scores of fire experts and survivors have pointed out in angry op-ed columns and blogs, this is a lunatic, if not homicidal, scheme that elevates developers' bottom-lines over human life. Those who have actually confronted 100-foot-high firestorms, driven by hurricane-velocity winds, know that the developer slogan--'It's not where you build, but how you build'--is a deadly deception.
"Meanwhile, the new fire cataclysm seems to be rewarding the very insiders most responsible for the uncontrolled building and underfunded fire protection that helped give the Santa Ana winds their real tinder. While conservative ideologues now celebrate San Diego's most recent tragedy as a 'triumph' of middle-class values and suburban solidarity, the business community openly gloats over the coming reconstruction boom and the revival of a building industry badly shaken by the mortgage crisis."
And Mike Davis at TomDispatch.com sums it all up.
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