Heated Discussion

Lava fire (Chronicle photo)

We first read the news about the Lava Fire near Mount Shasta two weeks ago when we were in Hawaii. Subsequently

The Lava Fire exploded over the next few days, burning across 25,000 acres, destroying a dozen homes and menacing thousands of residents in Weed, Lake Shastina, the town of Mount Shasta and other mountain communities.

The U.S. Forest Service is being blamed by some Californians:

Some local residents criticized the Forest Service for bungling the opportunity to stop the fire before it grew large, while federal officials said extraordinary dry conditions kept the fire alive...

The perception is that Cal Fire puts fires out while the Forest Service lets them burn...The difference is baked into the two agencies’ missions. The Forest Service is charged with managing national forests, including huge tracts of time in the Sierra Nevada, to sustain the health and productivity of these lands. Cal Fire isn’t a land manager but is responsible for fighting fire in most of the state’s forested communities — the wildland-urban interface — and its mission is to protect life and property.

Because the dispute is between State and Federal agencies that are both commanded by Democrats, the terms and tone of the discussion have improved. It was only last year that wildfires were political: Progressives blamed California's devastating fires on President Trump's withdrawal from the Paris climate accords. President Biden had the U.S. rejoin the climate agreement this February. yet we're still having fires, as anyone with an ounce of intelligence knew would occur.

In 2020 President Trump lost the election partly because he inflamed the body politic. In 2022 let's hope that those who used the most nonsensical reasons to justify their hatred of him will pay a similar price.