Fires in El Dorado County

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Well, if you don't follow the news, you might be surprised to hear that there have been some rather large fires in California recently. The one near me, the Caldor fire in El Dorado County, has burned hundreds of thousands of acres, destroyed hundreds of homes, injured firefighters and threatened ski resorts and towns such as South Lake Tahoe and Placerville. We are lucky so far that there haven't been any human deaths. No doubt many animals haven't survived. It never got closer than 25 miles to us, but the winds blew it much farther than that to the east. It could have come here. Even though my neighborhood is suburban, we are not totally safe. A few years ago, fires burned down residential areas of Oakland and Santa Rosa. There's been a lot of political sniping about forest management, funding cuts, etc., but from what I'm seeing, there has been quite a lot of thinning. The problem is that we are in the middle of a three year drought, it's hotter, drier and the terrain is very steep. My own Congressman actually made the comment that firefighting is not exactly skilled work. He's been doing damage control since, but what an idiot. I saw a video about what hard work it is to clear a line of defense in advance of a fire. Really, I just wish all these political people would stop pointing fingers and figure things out. And arsonists, well don't get me started. A lot of these fires are started by arsonists.