PROSPECTIVE

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“I HAVEN’T GOT THE SLIGHTEST IDEA HOW TO CHANGE PEOPLE, BUT STILL I KEEP A LIST OF PROSPECTIVE CANDIDATES JUST IN CASE I SHOULD EVER FIGURE IT OUT..”

David Sedaris

The largest loss of life fire in the United States took officially the lives of 1100 people. But many more were never accounted for some in the 2000 degree plus fire simply being reduced to ashes and blown away.

The fire covered 1.3 million acres in parts of three states making it one of the largest fires in history. Conditions were perfect for the ‘perfect storm’. A prolonged drought, high amount of combustibles on the ground. Two weather systems colliding and creating winds of over 100 miles per hour.

No one knows what started it but it was common practice to burn slash and acres after logging and creating farm land.

Would you jump to the point that considering the devastating fires that this country has had, that Climate Change would be a factor in this fire?

Check your perspective.

This fire took place in 1871 in the region around Peshtigo Wisconsin. If you never heard of it, it is because it happened the same day as the Great Chicago Fire. Three and a half square miles and there were some deaths. Yet the Chicago Fire is remembered and not Peshtigo.

Without the time frame, and what the conditions were, did you automatically think that this was just another story that you could blame on politics, or mankind’s greed today?

Conditions at that time in the north woods were ripe for a normal set of conditions that have forever had a history in this world. We are quick to blame things that we have no control over rather than things that we do.

We have seen the perfect storm several times in this country. Yet the fact that drought is the normal state of affairs in the West and Central parts of this continent. The perfect storm gave rise to Hurricane Dorian. Even though the mate of Dorian was the Hurricane of 1935. Yet there are those who will still say that man had a hand in all of this. Talk about being conceited.

Mismanagement of forests and grasslands set up the conditions for the weather systems to enhance the severe fire storms that we have put up with on a regular basis. Government has done little to change the way the land is managed under their control, other than just letting it go.

Farmers and ranchers are working with all the resources to prevent the conditions to exist in the future. In the long run the land, especially in Oklahoma, has benefited from the fires by killing vast numbers of the cedar trees that were totally out of control.

Controlled burn associations are popping up to bring neighbors together to use fire for the benefit of the land. Increasingly the fire departments are adding to the number of equipment and better designs to the equipment to better fight fires with.

There is still a critical lack of manpower and budgetary improvements to better protect our people and land.

Rather than sit on your tail and talk about Global Warming start thinking about the real issues. Try doing something positive rather than buy into a bunch of political claptrap.

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