FIRE TORN SKIES ACROSS AMERICA

Sometimes Current Events Are Just Too Painful Even For Writers

WHY I HAVEN’T WRITTEN ABOUT MAUI UNTIL TODAY

Yes, even writers get affected by the emotional climate of the current zeitgeist. As the Mom of six and Grandmother of ten I feel the pain acutely. The loss seems unbearable and in fact is unbearable.

I believe the Maui fires symbolize much that is tragic in our lives. The reaction of the main stream press has been predictably servile - silent on the questions that underlie the tragedy.

Tragically we have learned to expect this utter lack of truth from the media - and a cringing tendency to fail to answer relevant questions. Those appointed truth tellers have become the liars.

Accusations that the deep state could have been involved in this tragedy point to even more to mourn than the victims themselves. And unfortunately in the current environment of world totalitarianism - that that may be true - is all too believable.

As a former Californian I and my family have survived at least six wild land fires. In the most recent one before we left California for the last time it happened as follows.

One morning I woke at around four AM, wind howling around the house, to see flames shooting down the Western canyon toward the Pacific.

Santa Ana driven fires usually often begin in the hills where the winds are funneled by the geography (compressed) into hurricane force. The slightest spark in the tinder dry chaparral ecology is fed rapidly by the incendiary oils in the plants.

As a veteran of wild fires and as student of fire ecology I did not panic. It was burning at that point away from the house and we had prepared our land and house for the almost certain possibility of Santa Ana driven fires.

I began preparing to leave the house. Woke the family and began selecting things to pack into the car. It would be hours before the fire blew close enough to the house but there is no way to forecast the complexity and where they will strike - so we phoned the fire department and waited.

The skies turned black - the ocean red - as shown in my photograph above - and a huge fire tornado rose above the hillsides behind the house to the East like a scene from a war.

Photo albums, hard drives, food, water and face masks go into the car. Guitars, other precious belongings all stuffed in and ready to go. From previous experience we knew how long it could be before we might be allowed back into the area.

On this occasion we were fortunate. When we left we drove through wind-driven flames - sheltered by the fire brigades. You just don’t know when you are in the middle of a fire storm whether you will survive or not.

But we were Californians and fire came with the territory. Until such a time arrived that we decided - that a land so mismanaged, so badly governed - that fire like this could victimize so many citizens meant one thing.

Eventually we would leave California for good. It was not the first time we fled California but it would be the last. That was over ten years ago.

In the sixth and last firestorm we personally experienced we were once again fortunate to have survived and have had a home to return to.

There were to be other fires which affected our grown children who choose to remain in California. These were even more harrowing as we kept track of the fires and our children by internet and telephone as they fled. One of them in the Paradise fire so often compared with Maui.

I could write several volumes on fire, on California and on wild fire ecology. But that is not the purpose of this essay.

But my emotions for what happened in Maui are outrage and anger. Outrage that that such a thing could happen. We live in an advanced culture and have all the knowledge of our digitally enhanced world at our fingertips.

It is impossible for me to believe that those in power did not recognize the danger in time to warn the people and offer safe passage. If we could not even offer such a modicum of safety then what do we pay taxes for?

And yet our own collective cultural wisdom and the so-called wisdom we call artificial intelligence could not prevent this tragedy. I say we have a tremendous debt we owe to the victims of this fire. It is a debt that can only be paid with our full dedication and attention to due diligence.

My anger and outrage is temporary and my dedication is that this current flare of emotions will help to fuel a rising of a phoenix from these ashes. That never again will such a confluence of stupidity and lack of due diligence be possible.

That never again must I think of Dylan Thomas’s poem “A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London in relationship to a child’s death.

I am mourning but by mourning I dedicate myself anew to a refusal to mourn. We as humans have the capability and the spiritual grace to see that these individuals who perished in the flames of Maui are respected for who they were and for how they died.

That the lack of due diligence by a government of fools shall not stand.

That the ability - even the possibility - that a government shall not defend the rights and lives of her people shall be declared null and void and as having no standing and no rights.

I am not saying the government or the corporations or institutions who also represent them are directly responsible for this tragedy but I am saying the due diligence we need to expect from these is absent. We cannot support leaders who profit from us but fail to understand or support the necessary due diligence to support our lives.

We as citizens should not be forced to leave our land so bad government can run rampant and destroy our lives. Make the government leave - they survive at our consent and with our tax dollars.

And as far as that one time $700 payment to the Maui survivors - I say revoke your consent to be governed by these psychopaths and their courtiers - let the government and their bloated minions - EAT CAKE.

NO TO GOVERNMENTS WHO PREY UPON HER OWN PEOPLE. JUST NO!

HELL NO!

As an addendum I attach a post I wrote about the film Aloha, on August 4, 2023, which touches lightly on Hawaii and the USA.