No firestorms in the kingdom of God

BY COLLEEN DOUGLASS

While in college, Colleen Douglass interned with the Angeles National Forest in California, and later received training in the various activities of the United States Forest Service, such as wildlife, fire management, and recreation. She designed a nature trail, collected and analyzed animal and plant materials, and worked in a base camp during an enormous forest fire that drew firefighters from throughout the state and beyond.

Few people living in Southern California in past weeks would be surprised to discover that this region is considered one of the three most fire-prone areas in the world, along with southeastern Australia and southern France. Our flora and fauna haven't seen much rain for quite a while.

In the best of times, the region's chaparral shrubbery supports a semiarid ecosystem that embraces summer droughts and occasional wildfires. In fact, seeds from various indigenous plants require some kind of "fire cue"—heat, charred wood, smoke, or a post-fire condition—to germinate successfully. But combining dry brush with warm weather and "devil winds" (the high-velocity easterly Santa Ana winds that come in from the desert) makes for a particularly combustible environment. All it takes for a conflagration is a few embers from a downed power line, a cigarette flicked out a car window, a campfire left unattended, or—the worst-case scenario—an arsonist determined to wreak havoc. This was proved devastatingly true in October, when fast-moving wildfires swept over mountaintops and through valleys, consuming more than 500,000 acres, over 2,000 homes, and at least seven lives, at a cost expected to crest at around two billion dollars.

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