my domain seems more vulnerable. two years ago a local arsonist, a mill-worker, nearly burned down the town of quincy. he lit 24 fires before he was caught. had the wind come up, the town would have been toast. and i've seen huge fires take off. with a high wind nothing can stop them. and i can think of many vulnerable places.
take tilden park above berkeley. years ago a fire in the hills burned hundred of houses and i had fetid smoke blowing across my lookout for days. and if you walk down shattuck avenue, you will see a brass plaque on a brick building that says, SUCH AND SUCH A FIRE BURNED TO HERE. and that was years ago.
or take someone driving through central park in the middle of the night with a fifty mile an hour wind throwing out flares. this would do more damage, burning down to wall street, than flying planes into the twin towers ever did. and would take less preparation.
i hesitate to write about this, not wanting to give anyone ideas. alas, they already have them. when we invaded iraq, thanks to george w. bush, i felt we'd started a war we couldn't win. this spread terrorism like lyme disease, which now covers the world. even without an enemy, fires burned last summer in sweden, the ukraine, towns in greece, countryside in portugal and spain, not to mention our disastrous conflagrations in california.
we simply, i think, cannot guard against this, at least as a democracy. reagan, bush, and now trump elected on platforms of Armageddon, advocated by heaven bound christians, with the rest of us headed below. plenty of people in islam probably believe the same. our president can't see why nuclear weapons can't be used. and we run a risk.
true, islamic terrorists in the west, the U.S. included, seem to favor shooting people face to face and dying in glory like 'true heroes.' perhaps they'd find setting wildfires too abstract. one can only hope.
