Kill him! Kill the Beast!

Well. I found out tonight that Raymond Oyler's jury has recommended the death penalty. I feel more insecure with this than I care to admit. I knew only one man who was killed in the Esperanza fire - I also know his wife, and have known both of them since I was a kid riding my bike over their drying fire hose many years ago. I know the impact that this tragedy had on my father, who wept his share and then some, and probably still does - we all know that it could have been him, just as easily. It is a job based on risk, as are few others. This is what I thought tonight as I read that the jury had chosen death for the man who started this fire.

I was conflicted. Would killing this guy make any difference? Would it bring anyone back? Would it undo a single goddamn thing? No.

Then I thought about driving home on highway 38. Mid-October. Warm, windy. Dry as a bleached bone in a cheap western film. And what comes flying out of the window in front of me? It was either a lit cigarette or a unicorn... you get three guesses which. It was stupid. Double stupid, in fact, since the offending scumbag was in a truck with a personalized license plate. It turns out that the truck belonged to one of the camps along highway 38 (I won't mention any names, but the license plate read UU CAMP). After about 15 seconds on the internet I had an email address, and I kindly reminded them to remind their employees that throwing a lit cigarette from a vehicle in the mountains during the height of fire season was reckless in the least. They took the whole thing in jest.

Then I thought about fire in southern California. It's terribly destructive. It takes a few lives every year, and devastates hundreds - sometimes thousands, sometimes tens of thousands. It's really a big damn problem in a place where people insist on living in remote, wooded places and expecting someone to save them and their shake-shingle cabins (or, in Big Bear Lake, their ridiculous mansions). But we all know this. Every year we see "Firewatch" on tv because A) there's a 10-acre fire near Santa Clarita or B) there's a 5,000 acre fire in the San Bernardino mountains. Obviously, these numbers are interchangeable and expandable - further bulletins as events warrant.

Then I thought about what it takes for a Californian to do something in our mountains that is likely to start a fire. These are the heinous things that come to mind.

1: Calling down lightning through Witchcraft
2: Dropping a nuclear bomb near City Creek
3: Destroying a third of the Earth with fire
4: Getting 70 suicide bombers with napalm strapped to their chests to walk (hike, roll, whatever) in different directions from the middle of the Arctic Circle (between Big Bear and Lake Arrowhead) for 25 minutes and then explode
5: Throwing a lit cigarette out the window
6: STARTING A FIRE ON PURPOSE

All of these actions have a similar possible outcome, and anyone who does one of these things knows it. Unless they're retarded - in which case I beg the courts to show mercy. All others die.

It's not hard. People have made the southern California mountains a potentially dangerous place to live. It will even itself out, eventually... nature always does. But humans do not have the right, or the obligation, to strive toward that balance by setting the fucking place on fire. Stupid or not, we all have the right to pursue our happiness here. We are doing a pretty good job of mitigating the dangers and, at the same time, preserving the natural order of the mountains (as much as that is possible. kind of). Anyone who thinks they need to start wildfires has no respect for other people, and as such, no respect as a human should be given to him. I hope that the jury has conferred an educated verdict, because if Raymond Oyler started this fire intentionally he should be burned - burned to the point where it takes him five days to die, like young Pablo, plus the hours of unimaginable pain endured by the other four. Have you ever burned yourself? What was it like? You grabbed a pan out of the oven but forgot the mitt... that's a second degree burn. You got drunk and held your forearm over a lighter for ten seconds? It's probably a third degree burn which left a scar that you will brag about for the next year and be ashamed about after that. It hurt like a bitch, eh? And that's, what, a thousandth of a percent of your body?

I haven't been angry about this in a while. I am sad every day, and I honestly, honestly hope that everyone in southern CA sees an Engine 57 sticker at least once and gives it the ol' Google. Let's cut the human-caused fires down to zero and let our firefighters deal with Nature. She's capable of quite the fight as it is.