INCREDIBLE IMBACILS AMONG US

 By Daniel Zitzer

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Am I wrong here? Do I not get it? Am I out to lunch?

I’m thinking of the fires here in Southern California. I live in Acton and I’m scared poop-less. I stand here and look up and I’m choking—not at the thought that we may be losing our home (that would be terrible, but we can always be rebuilt), I’m literally choking with ash, smoke and the hundreds of pollutants that fill our air. Twice I’ve left the area to be able to breathe. My lungs can’t take it much longer. Twice I’ve come back to check on our property, our animals and horses are safe, some of our valuable property is with us, my wife and children are on their way to her mother in California City. I’m sitting in my car; with the air on, keeping a vigil in what could be a catastrophe for many of us, while I decided to type this on my laptop. And it just occurred to me that all this could have been avoided twenty-five years ago, thirty years or more.

We bought our house twenty-one years ago. I remember, a Fire Captain meeting with us at the school and telling us in a town-hall meeting-like atmosphere, to make sure that we kept all brush and wild growth under control on the perimeters of our homes. I remember him saying that it was up to us to be the “first line of defense” and not allow the growth to overhaul our community. But I also remember him saying that many of the environmentalists were working against them. Instead of the Fire and Forest Departments being able to fan into the hills and control the “old growth” that is a deadly fuel for a fire, they were being cut below their knees every time they suggested doing “back-burns” or cutting old growth and foliage or “shave” hillsides.

I’m listening to the radio and they are reporting that portions of these raging fires are being fueled by growth that is over forty to sixty years old. The stuff is burning faster than if we had poured gasoline. So why were not the fire department and forest department allowed to take preventive measurements with our forest years ago?

The answer is simple. These environmental “whackos” put more value on an endangered squirrel, fish or rat, than on the value of my children, my wife and our property. To them, an undisturbed forest is their optimum goal so that these critters can live, no matter what sorrows and tragedies they might bring to people. I’m looking at an older couple right now who lost their house, which is located about a quarter of a mile from where we live. They are crying inconsolably. Can you blame them? Their life has been altered forever, and for what? So that some pseudo-do-gooder can feel venerated because he/she has done something for the ecology, Mother Nature, the earth balance?

I’d like to blame all these whackos but in reality, they just take advantage of the situation as it exists. We have to blame our State and our Federal Government for this mess. For years they have been kowtowing to the environmentalist lobby because, hey, who does not want a clean environment? I know I do, but at what cost? If you are labeled as being anti-environmentalist, you are not cool. You don’t fit with the in-crowd. You’re not in the same group of do-gooders like some of the more famous actors in Hollywood. We can’t have that, can we?

You have been led to believe that all creatures of nature come first before the human animal. If I lose my house I will be terribly upset, but I will get over it. Yesterday we lost two firemen, brave men who were trying to make it better for us. If we lose one more person because of these fires, the citizens of this community, this State and the citizens of the United States MUST get up in arms and demand that people who are qualified to do what they are supposed to do—that is to prevent catastrophes such as the one we are experiencing--be allowed to proceed, no matter what rat or squirrel, tiny fish or tortoise it affects. HUMANS ARE FIRST, everything else follows. God help us!

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