NY Times: "Is a house ever worth more than a life?"

[markpkessinger]

In the wake of the tragic deaths of 19 firefighters in Arizona, Timothy Egan, writing in the Times' "Opinionator" column, asks a very long overdue question.

[font size=5]New West, Old Story[/font]
[font size=2 color="gray"]By [font color="black"]Timothy Egan[/font][/font]

< . . . >

Sunday’s fatal toll from the Yarnell Hill fire in Arizona was the greatest loss of firefighter lives in the United States since Sept. 11. But those who died in New York that terrible day were not rushing into a building in order to protect property — they were trying to save lives.

You can’t blame people for living amid the chaparral and piñon pine in the sweep of Arizona where the land rises up from the ceaseless heat of the valley to the cooler air of the plateau. It’s stunning country, even with the menace of monsoon winds in summer. Nor can you blame people in Colorado for living with the sweet fragrance of a forest at 9,000 feet. In the last two decades, by one estimate, almost 40 percent of the new homes built in the West are smack dab in the middle of fire country — a habitat of high risk.

But these homeowners should not expect good people to die protecting those houses. And so in Arizona this week, among the grieving, we heard variations of a theme that always comes up after these tragedies: a structure is replaceable, a life is not.

That sentiment, which is supposed to be the guiding philosophy of fighting wildfires, too often gets tossed aside. In a panic, homeowners rage and scream: do something! They rage and scream at their member of Congress, often an anti-government zealot, who then rages and screams at the federal agencies: do something!

< . . . .?

[markpkessinger]

1. Here is the text of a comment I posted on the NY Times' site

My comment posted to the article

Mark Kessinger
[font color="gray"]New York, NY[/font]

I cannot help but wonder: how many of these wealthy homeowners, in very conservative Arizona, whose homes were saved, are also among those who embrace a politics that begrudges benefits, pensions, etc. to public sector workers? I saw a woman on one news broadcast getting sentimentally weepy over the brave firefighters who lost their lives "to save our homes." Something tells me her post-mortem praise comes as small comfort to the families left behind.

July 5, 2013 at 3:47 a.m.

:

[cali]

5. Are they wealthy? It's my impression that Yarnell

is not a wealthy community.

Not that whether they're wealthy or not, has much to do with the points Egan makes in his piece and which I agree with.

[markpkessinger]

8. Fair enough . . .

. . . but the question of whether the lives of firefighters should be lost to save property stands.

A friend with whom I shared this article made a fascinating observation. She pointed out that when a hurricane drowns, say, New Orleans, lots of people respond by saying the residents should have known better and shouldn't have chosen to live there. Yet nobody seems to say that about the folks who choose to live in the fire-prone areas of places like Arizona or California.

[davidn3600]

2. Depends on who you ask

Insurance companies and mortgage lenders would say yes.

[BainsBane]

3. No, but apparently many think guns are

[markpkessinger]

4. kick

Kicking because this article is really worth a read.

[enough]

6. The question needs to be asked:

snip from the article>

But here we are again with the question, What did they die for? The author Norman Maclean spent the last 14 years of his life working on a book that became “Young Men and Fire” trying to answer it. His subject was a 1949 fire in Montana that killed a squad of Smokejumpers. It was, he wrote, “a tragedy where nothing much was left of the elite who came from the sky but courage struggling for oxygen.”

end snip>

[ananda]

7. I think firefighters generally expect to put out fires.

That's what they sign up for. That's what they do.

The real issue at question is whether people ought to build homes
in vulnerable areas, whether it be areas in danger of fires, flooding,
drought, etc.

My opinion is that you can't stop people from wanting to live on
the beach or on the mountainside or really wherever they want
and there's always a greedy developer or builder willing to
exploit them for profit. The same goes for guns, GMO foods,
the use of pesticides, fracking and drilling, mountaintop removal,
and so on. It's all a matter of greed on one side, and humans able
to be abused and exploited on the other.

So the tragedies will keep happening, ad nauseum and ad infinitum.

[aikoaiko]

9. No one expects firefighters to die for property as Egan implies

Firefighters save lives and property, if they can.