Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Moshe Abrams's avatar

While this is completely anecdotal, I think it's pretty informative. I spoke with a fire fighter yesterday, and he told me the following:

"I immediately knew that last week's fires, and today's fires, had to be arson. In firefighting school we learned about the normal causes of wildfires, and the *only* natural cause is lighting. Most of the time, it's someone throwing a cigarette on the side of the road or not putting a campfire out. In this case, there were three things that made me conclude that it was arson. 1. Time of day. Both last week and this week the fires started early morning. This is highly unusual for a campfire getting out of hand or a cigarette not being put out. 2. Location. The fires started in the middle of nowhere, not near any campground or road. 3. There were no reports or detections of lightning."

While this quote isn't verbatim (it was word of mouth), it makes a lot of sense. You also can't tell based on this logic who it was that set the fire.

Otherwise, great post!

Expand full comment
Sharon Hirsch's avatar

Thank you for the informative article as always.

Expand full comment
20 more comments...

No posts