PeteFree.comWaldo Canyon Fire, Colorado Springs — Evening, 26 June 2012 — a Wind-Aided Inferno Sprinted into the City — and the Simultaneous Demonstration of the Value of Competent Government
© 2012 Peter Free
27 June 2012
Multiple fronts, temporarily hopeless conditions
The fire advanced on multiple fronts. These pictures show just one.
Those are homes burning.
The inferno’s two reminders of why effective government is necessary
This wildfire, and the response to it, illustrate two reasons why government is necessary:
(i) Maintaining a rule of law that enhances public safety
(ii) Coordinating and implementing emergency responses
Point One —the threat of fire and the rule of law
Mandatory fire mitigation measures are part of a sensibly managed community in fire-prone regions.
Libertarians and anarchists take umbrage at being told what to do. But it is clearly in everyone’s best interest to (a) regulate building codes and (b) the buildup of potential fire materials on real estate in geographic regions as flammable as this one is.
That kind of common and public-spirited sense, however, gets lost in pin-headed arguments over the alleged primacy of individual rights.
Pertinent, here, is the fact that some of the subdivisions that are burning allegedly had homeowners’ association regulations that prevented proper fire mitigation measures. These laxities put the subdivisions, and the City around them, at risk.
Point Two — massive, coordinated emergency responses can only be done at the government level
People who have hiked this area’s ridges and very steep valleys, and wandered through their resin-filled forests, know how close to impossible it is to contain wind-aided fire on this terrain.
As I write, eight hundred fire fighters here are constantly risking their lives under unpredictable weather conditions.
Multiple law enforcement agencies are over-stretched in attempting to do their regular duties and direct evacuations and fire-fleeing traffic.
From what I can see, local, state, and federal agencies have done a masterful job of trying to contain forces (which by nature of terrain, vegetation, and weather) cannot be.
The moral? — When one bad-mouths government, simply as an ill-considered matter of ideological principle, one is expressing a lack of appreciation for the people who keep our most basic services running
The Waldo Canyon Fire should force a local recognition that these agencies’ skill and cooperation stand as counter-arguments to the vitriolic extremists who constantly malign them.
Today’s example, set by:
firefighters — who are within spitting distance of Waldo’s Wall of Killing Heat
and police — who are not that much farther away
should shame the Crazies on the Right into thinking a bit more deeply about the correlation between effective government and a just and safe society.
That, of course, will be asking too much:
Last night, I heard an obnoxious person criticizing the agencies, that were battling home-consuming flames, for not having achieved perfection in overcoming Nature’s perfect storm of fire-inflating conditions.
This guy had obviously never once thought about the implications that terrain, drought, and standing fuel brought to the table in the treed neighborhood, where he had chosen to live.
He sounded like one of those very many people, who perennially think that it is someone else’s job to ensure the absolute safety of his life and possessions.
And I am willing to bet (given the way he spoke) that he is also someone who makes a habit of railing against taxes and government authority.
The ignorant, stupid, and simply unappreciative will always be with us. Hopefully, the rest of us outnumber them.