Nobody in this country should be subjected to catastrophic uncontrolled fires caused by negligence on the part of a neighbor, especially if that neighbor is a public land management agency.

Some of the cities subjected to the SoCal fires have been there for 300 years or more. They are not “new” impositions into a wild landscape, anymore than were the homes in Greece that burned last summer.

Numerous other California towns (of relative antiquity) are at certain risk of catastrophic fire. Without fuels management of surrounding public lands, they will burn fiercely someday despite bans on new homes and the existing homeowners raking their pine needles.

The elimination of inhabitants and of fire suppression will not put out a single fire. Those oft proffered “solutions” solve nothing. In fact, those eliminations will make fires bigger. Modern megafires have traveled as much as 50 miles to get to the “ex-urban” enclaves that are supposedly dotting our wilderness areas with vacation homes, but are actually on private land far, far away from designated Wilderness.

Fire is not a special benefit that Mother Nature graces us with, but rather a very destructive force that needs to be managed for the health and safety of the populace and the landscape.

We need not live jam-packed into urban bomb shelters, surrounded by wolves and holocausts. There is a better way.

It’s called stewardship.