[Snerfling]

At the risk of incurring the rath of the thread, I'll take up the subject, but only to a limited extent.

I'm a lifelong Calif native, and as long as I can remember, a significant number (50%?) of these fires are started by whackjob arsonists.

In fact, I believe the suspects behind the big Malibu fire back in '93 were two guys trying to get on the fire dept and wanted to look like heroes by helping put out the fire.

While I don't think (at the moment at least) that these fires are anything other than just standard Oct Santa Ana fires, even the dumbest terrorist can clearly see the effect they have on people, nature and the economy.

For a $10 investment in road flares, two guys can take a nice pleasure drive through the mountains the next time we have some Santa Anas - one guy at the wheel and the other lighting and throwing flares out the window.

Don't think that state and Fed officials don't realize this; if not this time, who knows next time?

[lainie]

I agree with what you said 100%. The person earlier, though, wanted to talk about this disaster being the work of A.Q. (more specifically his 'prediction' of same). No one wants to go there.. not on this thread anyway.