Is California under a Curse?

The Philadelphia Trumpet ^ | December 2003 | Gerald R. Flurry

[BenAriel]

California has just experienced another crisis. It has just seen its biggest outbreak of wildfire—it broke all past records. Some 750,000 acres were burned, about 3,600 homes destroyed and 20 lives lost.

    Here is what U.S.News & World Report wrote about it: “Throughout the American West, trees already short of nutrients because of crowding are suffering from A FOUR-YEAR-OLD DROUGHT, THE WORST IN 300 YEARS. Bark beetles have attacked the weakened trees across much of the West, killing up to 70 percent of them in some areas. In San Bernardino National Forest, beetles have ravaged half a million acres so far. When fire does break out, the crowding allows flames to leap treetop to treetop in a fast-moving crown fire, as happened in parts of Southern California last week” (Nov. 10, emphasis mine).

    California had a six-year drought at the end of the 1980s. Now it has suffered through another multi-year drought.

    That state also has a $38 billion deficit, the worst of any state in the United States. It cost a governor his job.

    What is happening in California?

    Here is an excerpt from a Trumpet article I wrote in December 1993: “One disaster after another is striking California. These deadly disasters are repeatedly labeled the ‘worst ever’! … With all the disasters that have struck California the past few years, it’s as if the state is under a curse.

    “The recent fires in Southern California were their WORST EVER. One lady said, ‘[I]t was like the wrath of God.’ [Could it be connected to the wrath of God?]     “These fires revealed an even greater crisis. Reports say 20 of the 26 fires were set by arsonists! The Los Angeles area is seething with all kinds of hatred—which is only a microcosm of the entire nation. In many areas of the U.S., racial hatred is ready to explode like the Southern California firestorm. And we no longer have the WILL to implement the strong government action that is needed! …     “The Rodney King and Reginald Denny trials … inflamed racial tension. The 1992 Los Angeles race riots were that city’s WORST EVER. They were some of the deadliest riots in U.S. history! Others fear riots will also occur in their cities. [That is a justifiable fear.]     “In 1991, wildfires in Oakland, California, destroyed 2,900 structures, and 25 people died from the fires. These fires were the WORST EVER in California! The state is now struggling with a budget deficit that is the WORST EVER—BY FAR—that any American state has faced!

http://www.thetrumpet.com/geo/na/docs/issues/200312/coverstory-personal.asp