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If there are ever awards for the most successful
propaganda campaign known to history, Smokey Bear will
certainly be a contender for first place. It takes little
effort to recall his deep, authoritative baritone: Crush
all smokes dead out.
Break matches in half.
Drown your campfires.
Remember, only you can
prevent forest fires.
Smokey's advice was sound, but that last statement was a stretcher of Clintonian proportions. The truth is that about 90 percent of forest fires are started by lightning, and so if we humans never ventured into the woods, there would still be forest fires.
But they never told us that in school. Instead, we were led to believe that the forests would stand green and perfect eternally, never besmirched by smoke and flame, if it weren't for careless humans.
Many myths are harmless, but this one leads to trouble because it encourages people to build unsafe homes in Stupid Zones.
The Mountain West offers an abundance of Stupid Zones -- places subject to swelling soils, landslides, flash floods and the like. Our mountain forests, especially those that are at lower elevations and cluttered with underbrush, are one of the larger Stupid Zones -- a flammable mixture just waiting for the proper combination of low humidity and high wind to turn into an inferno.
Then all it takes is a spark. The spark could come from human malice or negligence, but it could also come from the sky. Yet the pretense persists that a given forest fire -- Cerro Grande recently, or Buffalo Creek a few years ago -- could never have happened without human provocation.
It's easy to understand why this pretense endures, since it provides someone to sue, and in this country, everything bad that happens is presumed to be someone else's fault.
It certainly couldn't be the homeowner's fault, could it?
But consider the typical rural mountain home. It's roofed with shake shingles, even though shakes are generally quite flammable -- lots of us use old shakes for kindling in our woodstoves.
There's at least one big wooden deck, which may offer superlative views, but also provides an excellent place for a fire to get roaring right up against the exterior walls.
Those walls may well be logs, or perhaps cedar siding -- stuff that burns pretty well.
The evergreen trees right by the house provide welcome shade and a charming atmosphere -- and they're also a vector for the forest fire.
That, alas, is what people build in this sylvan Stupid Zone. If I haven't drawn a clear picture, see for yourself the next time you venture southwest from Denver on U.S. 285. Just after you cross the Park County line, look for the Will o' the Wisp subdivision right off the highway.
It's only a few miles from the Buffalo Creek fire, and it's a perfect example of how not to build in the mountains if you're concerned about not having your house burn down.
That's just an accessible example. According to those who study such things, one high-risk area in Colorado extends from Salida to Westcliffe along the east flank of the Sangre de Cristo Range.
And as far as I know, there are no special building requirements there, so people are free to build their firetrap chalets.
That's their right, and I'm certainly not going to speak against it. For that matter, perhaps we should encourage more such construction in these and other Stupid Zones.
Why? I just read that John Fielder has given up taking pictures so he can promote petitions for an initiative that would require local governments to channel growth to areas outside of Stupid Zones.
It probably won't pass, given the amount of money that our public-spirited subdividers and developers will spend to persuade us that we should keep subsidizing ex-urban sprawl. But even if it did, it would just mean more laws, regulations, bureaucracy and court battles -- something that no sensible person desires.
And besides, we really don't need those regulations. Just keep building in Stupid Zones, let nature take its course, and those growth problems will go away, all on their own. There's only so much that Smokey can do, after all.
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