2025 LA Fires: 1962 Bel Air History Ignored

This documentary of the 1962 Bel Air Fire presents a better analysis of the 2025 Fires than anything I’ve seen currently. The warnings of unmanaged chaparral and Santa Ana winds coupled with wooden buildings and inadequate water pressure seems to have been ignored — in fact, it appears that the fire and police departments 60+ years ago were better prepared for the unprecedented event than their modern counterparts, who should have learned this lesson and been able to avoid much of this disaster.

The predictions were accurate, the recommendations ignored. Maybe this time people will pay better attention. Our forests and shrublands need to be actively managed — particularly in residential areas — if we are going to, again, limit the frequency and severity of these predictable catastrophic events.

37 thoughts on “2025 LA Fires: 1962 Bel Air History Ignored”

  1. The video shows how and why 1961 fires driven by Santa Ana winds burned 484 homes and 21 other buildings. Eerily similar to the recent fires, but fewer structures. Can’t say the folks in LA weren’t warned….

    FWIW, the half-hour film is narrated by an actor well known at the time, William Conrad. Also features some now-classic cars and trucks.

    Also FWIW, here’s a list of large fires and homes burned in LA County over the last century plus. https://www.laalmanac.com/fire/fi07.php

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  2. “Big Oil raked in record-breaking profits. The companies that caused the climate crisis are getting rich as they fuel the fire.

    @ExxonMobil
    : $55.7 billion
    @Shell
    : $39.87 billion
    @Chevron
    : $35.5 billion
    @BP_plc
    : $27.7 billion”

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  3. Thanks for posting this Bob. It’s hard to believe that a society that has been able to send men to the moon and build nuclear powered aircraft carriers, seems today to be incapable of managing brush fields. Or of keeping hydrants full of water. Or of managing forests. These are not un-fixable problems, It ain’t climate change. It’s been mindset change all along. We need to get rid of the fairy tales. It’s time to deal with reality. We’ve been shackled by 40 years of legislated (and regulated) failed ideas that have now been exhaustively proven to not work. It’s time to say enough.

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    • Hi Chris: The adoption of the EAJA allowance for wealthy nonprofits to sue US taxpayers via ESA and NEPA, coupled with the listing of the spotted owl in 1990 and the Clinton Plan in 1993 definitely seemed the turning point in the lives and safety of our forest wildlife and rural communities. Our premature introduction to Bidenomics did take place 40 years ago, as you say, and hopefully today marks a new Golden Age — following WW II to 1990 — for managing our public forests again.

      In Trump’s previous administration he paid zero attention to public forests and rural western communities, likely due in large part by all of the legal and political distractions he was being subjected to. This time, with a younger and far more brilliant cabinet to work with, things seem a lot more hopeful. There is a lot of work that needs to be done, it will take thousands of people many years to do it, and it should return far more funding to the treasury and to our timbered counties and states than it costs. DOGE would be a great starting point in this long-needed transition in my opinion.

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      • Not sure how one got to NEPA and ESA being at issue for the Bel Air Fires, which pre-date both laws. Nevertheless, get ready for disappointment. There’s nothing anyone can do in SoCal, without requiring rebuilding more thoughtfully (gasp, regulations). It’s not about wildland vegetation when communities abut wildlands subject to Foehn winds. It’s about building resilient communities. The number one variable predicting the probability of a house burning in many of these areas is proximity to another structure. Without drastic changes to how folks build back, changes that would include some pretty substantial requirements (aka, regulations), there’s little chance the past won’t be repeated. Take a look at most any SoCal area where a community burned >20 years ago, they look just like they did when the fire burned them down. The one big difference is the homes are now built out of more fire-resistant materials, which was mandated in 2007 by the state of California and has been proven to be moderately effective at reducing risk (oh, no, more regulations taking away personal rights to endanger others, the cause of everything bad!!!)

        If we are talking about landscape resilience in systems dominated by chaparral, the issue is human ignitions, not fuels. One can convert chaparral to grassland through frequent disturbance, but we’d have to repeatedly nuke large portions of the landscape, and we’d still have wind-drive fires in non-native grasslands, and I am not sure that would be all that much better.

        For fire adapted pine and conifer forests, there is quite a lot of science refuting the idea that the industrial forestry days that preceded the 1990s somehow prevented large wildfires, just a few of the many papers:

        https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/ecs2.4070

        https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1002/eap.1710?casa_token=YMxhAwWVy70AAAAA:dzYyp0FjIBUQ1aR8QTHSTbX8vU6VcDTcs1Hl97sKpSb6gv_EB4qrAIafHyrC_FpqvyuarEHdAVMjJ3k

        https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037811272400197X

        Continuing to totally ignore the science and making arguments that rely on a post hoc fallacy about fires not being a big deal until the 1990s when managing for spotted owls limited forest management, with no other supporting data, is not science evidence of anything. What actual science evidence is there?

        The USFS is unable to do the one thing that almost all fire scientists find over and over to be the most effective way to reduce wildfire risk within fire adapted forests, which is the application of frequent low severity fire at a large enough scale to mitigate risk. It has been shown over and over again, to the point that disputing the fact borders on insanity, that treatments in fire adapted conifer forests that do not include a fire component are not very effective. If we are talking about generating revenue to pay for the fuel treatment, there is no substantive evidence I am aware of indicating that commercial harvest can be implemented at the frequency needed to perpetually mitigate landscape fire risk.

        This is not to say that Biden is better than Trump on this. The Biden administration did not follow the science. I saw little increase in the use of low severity fire to reduce fuels over the past four years. NTM, I am continually disappointed to see on here that there are so many people against good fire. It gives me little hope that we are going to turn the corner on this anytime soon. In fact, how this issue is discussed on TSM has had an effect my forest management work.

        Yes, fire is a blunt and risky tool. However, fire and smoke are not a choice under the prevailing climate conditions. The more low severity fire we get on the ground, the easier it is to get more low severity fire on the ground. We need to get to the positive tipping point in more places. Continuing to suppress everything, while not drastically increasing prescribed fire or fire managed for resource benefits is just going to lead to more high severity landscapes.

        I agree that we need an army of people to treat fuels, and it will pay for itself in the long-run, but not through timber production, but by off-setting the cost of future suppression.

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        • 100% agreement. Conspiracy theories and false blame (see the new video from The Heritage Foundation, authors of Project 2025), in the name of politics, doesn’t help the situation now, or in the future.

          There are two main realities.

          1) The winds will blow.
          2) There are many multiple sources of human-caused ignitions, both around Los Angeles, as well as other parts of the country.

          There are other facts, but these two need to be addressed, in ANY ‘solution’. Those two realities can only be mitigated, or ignored, but will never go away.

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        • These blanket statements being made are actually without context and just plain wrong. You are pathetic noting a very broad brush with this statement: “For fire adapted pine and conifer forests, there is quite a lot of science refuting the idea that the industrial forestry days that preceded the 1990s somehow prevented large wildfires, just a few of the many papers”

          Actually, history has pointed out many, many successes of changing fire behavior and allowing firefighters to safely engage. I’ve read about, I’ve personally seen it and cringe when these types of misinformation make it to print (so to speak).

          I agree on building codes and dwelling density regulations but they can only be successful when adjacent fuels – WUI specific, are also managed. As for EAJA/NEPA, there is little doubt they have an effect of action. Opinions are good; some are even helpful!

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        • Hi “Me”: I would spend more time to respond to several of your excellent points if you were an actual person and not a pseudonym, but I’d like to address a couple of them. First, “the science” is not a monolith, and modeling is not science — computerized modeling is critical for modern-day engineering, but models can’t predict the future and have a poor record of establishing policies. The “voice” of science should be one of skepticism and questioning, not “consensus” — that’s politics, not science.

          Second, your point that regular broadcast burning would return the volatile chaparral to grass — as seems likely when the LA basin was principally cattle and sheep pasture for nearly a century. Grass is cheaper, safer, and easier to control with prescribed fires and grazing than chaparral. I’m not sure why you don’t think timber production would cover most or all costs, as it has in the past, but your point that savings in future wildfire management costs would more than off-set the costs of active fuel management is exactly right.

          Finally, the record of wildfires increasingly entering towns and cities since 1990 is pretty clear, and a topic I covered a few months ago in this forum. Shrubland and grassland areas have also been subjected to the same types of ESA lawsuits that have affected their management as our forests, with similar results of costly wildfires, dead wildlife, and deadly air pollution. We can do better, have done so in the past, and should be making every effort to fix this mess ASAP is my opinion.

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          • In the past, you were quite happy to cite public health papers about wildfire impacts to health that are 101% based on modeling and massive assumptions, without any real world data to back them up.
            So modeling that aligns with a narrative is ok, modeling that doesn’t (but aligns with real world observations) isn’t?

            Also, towns and cities are growing larger and larger, and the climate is changing. I know you don’t care for that, but maybe it is something beyond simply forest management?
            Is everyone else who has a PhD and says something different from you inherently wrong and biased?

            “……Back in my day” “….this is how we always did it” is how societies crumble.

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            • Hi Anon: Telling me what I think and what makes me happy is just about as stupid as your other attacks on my character and opinions. I would advise you to “get a life,” but you seem to have poor reading comprehension skills and an inability to make reasoned statements. Just name-calling and mind-reading. The only thing that really bothers me about your unrelenting goofy put-downs is that you are probably eating and paying rent at taxpayer expense.

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              • This coming from the guy who complains non stop that all the “illegals” stole his family business getting tax dollars to “replant” clearcuts, and that those clearcuts have nothing to do with what has happened in the last decade in western forests.
                That is rich.
                Show me some stats and unbiased, objective analysis. I’ve pointed out your shortcoming over and over, that someone with a “PhD” should not “share” publicly highly inflammatory “findings” that are only “preliminary” shows you never understood what science is.
                You said it yourself over and over – you went and got a Phd to show everyone else “what is right”, and to give your arguments weight.

                BTW, I do not make any of my money from tax payers. But again, nice straw man. (Also, no I won’t ever use my name, because individuals like you have shown a propensity to abuse their position and put people on blast, to their detriment and to your gain)

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                • Oh, so you are basically just a coward that wants to call other people names and belittle their opinions and accomplishments and then hide behind Mommy’s skirt. What a loser. I couldn’t describe your spineless lack of character any better than you have just done. I still think cowardly nitwits who can attack others from hiding, while not having enough huevos to use their real identities are a detriment to open discussion and good relations and shouldn’t be allowed to post — unless they have something meaningful to add to a discussion. That’s not you. You’re just a mouthy jerk that likes to troll real people.

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                  • How’d this and your statements/opinions work out for you?
                    https://forestpolicypub.com/2013/12/07/douglas-complex-rim-fire-paired-wildfire-economics-study-proposal/

                    You are against an open discussion if it does not align with your agenda. And you have a proven track record in the last 4 years or very publicly, and voraciously, attacking others personally and talking down to them, anonymous or not (See: Your responses to both Larry HF and the late, great, Jim F. ).
                    You denigrate any scientist or researcher who does not align with your agenda or vision. You openly and voraciously denigrate anyone who dares to do science that is “not your way”. You yell and complain and yell some more, but what have you actually done to change this situation you have created in your mind?

                    Publish some peer reviewed papers, and then maybe you can have some legitimacy.

                    Thank you, something you, goodbye.

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                    • For an anonymous troll to attack a real person for not having any “legitimacy” is rich. I am “against open discussion” with anonymous trolls because that’s the opposite of “open” when one person is in hiding. You seem to have a real delight in calling me names, giving me career advice, and reading my thoughts. But you obviously don’t know me very well and are unfamiliar with my work. You must be a sad person. Definitely a loser. Goodbye.

        • Me, you are, of course, correct that the number one need in the burned areas of So Cal is to build back better. The logistics of doing that are challenging, especially for those of lesser means. I hope a financial solution can be found.

          And, I agree with the use of prescribed and managed fire to help develop resilient forests, but the big challenge is how to do it safely at the scale needed as the burn windows continue to shrink. I think mechanical thinning can be effective if done well. In fact, I think it is one of the most important tools in the toolbox considering our changing climate.

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        • You used facts and science and peer reviewed literature and rational arguments, for an author who could care less about any of those things unless they fit their specific agenda and world view. And, as predictable, you are not using a ‘real name’ so everything you say is a moot point. Welcome to the Smokey Wire and Dr Bobby’s worldview. It will be fun to see the whole leopard eating faces things in 4 years or less.
          However, great points. I would add:
          https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1002/ecs2.2140

          https://www.sierraforestlegacy.org/Resources/Conservation/FireForestEcology/IndustrialForestlands/Levine%20et%20al%202022%20Industrial%20forests.pdf

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    • One reason government isn’t “capable” of doing what it used to is that people stopped wanting to pay for it (it seems like California was a good example of this).

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  4. Follow the money. Zybach is paid to gaslight the readers here.

    The Heartland Institute is an American conservative and libertarian 501(c)(3) nonprofit public policy think tank known for its rejection of both the scientific consensus on climate change and the negative health impacts of smoking.[2]

    Founded in 1984, it worked with tobacco company Philip Morris throughout the 1990s to attempt to discredit the health risks of secondhand smoke and lobby against smoking bans.[3]: 233–234 [4] Since the 2000s, the Heartland Institute has been a leading promoter of climate change denial.[5][6]

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartland_Institute#Funding

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    • Hi Larry: I think we addressed this before. I am not paid anything for what you call “gaslighting” on this blog, have never received — or given — a single dollar from/to Heartland — have only attended one of their meetings ever, about 10-15 years ago, and don’t even read their newsletter. But I did support their policies when I attended the meeting and probably gave them permission to use my name at that time. You are the expert on gaslighting, of course, but in this instance you are completely off base. Again.

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        • Hi Larry: I support Oregon returning to its true values of hard work, honesty, and no umbrellas. Unfortunately, our state government has become Californicated in recent decades and my hope is that it is replaced, and the sooner the better. Idaho doesn’t have beach frontage and the Greater Idaho effort doesn’t affect my neighborhood, so, you’re Wrong with that assumption, too.

          Given your public thoughts on politics, the worst news for you is that I became a registered Republican a few months ago. I had been a non-voting registered Libertarian for 40 years, beginning with attending their national convention in Denver in 1981 as an Oregon delegate, until I voted against Biden in 2020. The 2024 Oregon Republican platform has a resolution regarding state management of federal lands, so I joined. Same reason I became a Libertarian in 1980 — I honestly believe local communities can manage our public forests better than DC. By a lot. Not sure if that qualifies as being “phantasmagorical,” or not.

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          • The French and Spanish were the first European invaders in what is now the northwest United States and when Lewis and Clark explored before it was Oregon when much of the region was inhabited by the Northern Paiute. The Malheur River Indian Reservation was created by President Ulysses Grant by executive order in 1871 for Paiutes living at Fort Harney until the Bannock War of 1878 dissolved the settlement. Harney County was split from Grant County in 1889 at the time of Statehood and Burns was named county seat. When it was admitted to the Union the Oregon Constitution even contained a clause forbidding Negroes from moving to the state.

            Members of the Wadatika band of Burns Paiute sometimes known as the Harney Valley Paiute spread from the Cascade Mountains to Boise, Idaho but didn’t receive federal recognition until 1968.

            Today, white Republicans in the Northwest have clearly embraced the idea that the ground they live on was seized for them from aboriginal cultures by liberal democrat, President Thomas Jefferson through an executive order that even he believed was unconstitutional.

            In Southern California the success of pre-Clovis humans did indeed cause a mass extinction event but remanding lands in the public domain to the tribal communities from whom they were seized can’t happen soon enough.

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          • Okay. I followed your Heartland link. Apparently I was on their “policy board of advisors” in 2017, and may have seen this link at that time, too. They pay me zero and have never asked my advice, even once, despite your fake “gotcha” claims. I agreed with their position on Global Warming for many years and attended one of their meetings. Probably signed a petition or letter. And that is definitely not a “man bun.” The picture is from the cover of a magazine from 1994, and that is a ponytail when my hair was still red. I have never worn a man bun, never will (unless well paid to do so), nor ever had a serious conversation with anyone who did — mostly coffee vendors and weird guys on the street. I have worn a ponytail for most of the past 60 years, though, but it was a lot thicker then. And NOT a man bun. Your name-calling has gone too far this time.

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            • Now, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the FBI, US Marshalls Service and state officials are warning of white christianic zealots telegraphing pending violence against law enforcement especially in Oregon and Idaho.

              Redneck crackers brand Black Lives Matter protesters as unemployed slackers but a horde of Huns that takes over a federal wildlife refuge in Harney County to hasten the End Days can call themselves patriots?

              The American Left poses no violent threat to the United States while the hate-filled extreme white wing of the Republican Party always will.

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              • Larry, I value your comments when you add new information or your views on a specific issue. So many comment sections have been turned into “Reds bad” or “Blues bad” generically and I don’t want that stuff clogging up our TSW comment section. Another problem is that we could miss what you have to say that’s important and unique to you if we skip past comments from you because so often they are generic diatribes.

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                • I agree that some of Larry’s comments are too far off the trail, but I think catching someone in a lie about what they’ve done is a useful service in relation to the credibility of this site.

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                  • What “lie” did Larry expose? Was it something the Republicans did or Trump is claimed to have said? The vitriol and bizarre political claims that Larry makes hurts his credibility a lot — and, by extension, the credibility of this site. But he does sign his real name and can be held accountable for his statements, so that part is good.

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  5. Holy cow! Fire discussion and it turns into the spring harrow bovine discus turning exercise. Let the sandhills do it for you.

    The missing element in the wildland fire discussion that is about a national discussion today about “unplanned ignitions should be looked at for use as “prescribed fire.” Sorry, Chief, but prescribed fire is a 5 year rotation in grand bobwhite quail forest lands in the South. Southeast. Flat ground. Highest natural place in Florida is what? 384 feet above sea level? Close to that? Even in Oregon the flat lands in the Cascade’s rain shadow east side are managed Ponderosa pine where the Deschutes NF burns regularly. Until they get to Green Ridge and then if gets iffy. Why? topography. steep. heat rises. 500 feet up the sidehill and you have crown fire.

    When the Western Oregon Indigenous went east to get obsidian and other materials, they evidently used westside long west sloping ridge lines to travel to avoid treacherous stream side pathways and crossings. And going west in late summer, burned off the ridges behind them. Whatever burned beyond the ridge top was irrelevant. Just like it is with today’s USFS fire management. You can easily burn to remove fuel on flat ground, and where that is the landscape, still do. Unless, of course, the urbanista zealots demand a halt due to smoke. Who writes the DEQ, EPA Citations for Palisades fire smoke? How about the melted mercury flasks, the brake linings of the Bugatti?

    All I have to notice is that 17 of CaFires list of Most Destructive Fires in California History were on Chief Moore’s tenure as R-5 Forester, and now as Chief. Since the 2025 Palisades fire, a fire was bumped from that list. Now #20 is the 2020 August Complex: 921 Structures and 1,032,648 acres. And for that, Moore as Chief was replaced at R-5 by an Anthropologist with a Masters and fast track leadership slots for two decades. Sorry. When you need to rewire the house, you don’t hire a journeyman electrician, not a decorator with experience with building permits and installing light bulbs.

    The whole fire deal is when timber was replaced by social engineering the institutional memory and experience was replaced with supporters of ERA while never was ratified by the requisite number of states and in the time frame within the law. Until, evidently, the morning of January 20, 2025.
    Therein lies the problem and the consequences of the “problem” is the problem is still there, and has to be solved by removing and disposing of fuel. Topography will be there next year. Cold morning air from on high, the deserts to the east, will still become Santa Ana winds, or as they are called in Region 6, East winds. Heavy air gravity pulled down to sea level. If there is fire, and even lower pressure attracts the cold, heavy high pressure air. Equalizing in chemistry and physics. All you need is the “unplanned ignition source.” All the research tells us human activity causes 95% or more of “unplanned ignitions” outside of lightning. L.A. and SoCal already has most of the NorCal water. Every coastal river from the Klamath to SF Bay is diverted for human use from its watershed to another. Trinity (half the Klamath’s flow and colder than Klamath) to the Sacramento to final diversion from a canal near Fresno to the Westlands Irrigation District’s million plus acres. Eel River to the Russian river. Russian river to Napa Valley and Marin county, for potable water and Napa for vineyards and potable water.

    Water is not the issue. If it were, there would be nuclear powered desalination like arid rich countries poorer than California and its whatever, sixth largest economy in the world or some stunning number. The issue is fuel burns. Not weather. Not topography. Not distance from the equator. Not the presence of 30 million perpetrators of unplanned ignitions, by arson, accident, mechanical failure, blatant stupidity, or just a campfire to stay warm that sends an ember to the wrong place at the right time.

    Fuel is the issue. And the fuel is primarily imported exotic plants that came on livestock wool or hair. Or as excelsior protection for fragile treasures was Mediterranean climate plant seeds. Or gum wood, eucalyptus, because it is inherently tall and pretty. Or tall palms to send embers on the winds. Over grazing by Mexican trust puppy ranchers when Mexico gained independence from Spain, and started handing out land grants. Livestock became a meager existence. Sort of like being given a hardware store on the shores of Antarctica: do penguins need snow shoes? Leopard seals need Spot O Polish? Henry Dana exposed the primary trade: hides. Hides to be the precursor V belts to turn the emerging tools of the industrial revolution. That, and sales of live animals to Nantucket whalers for provisions, and whatever citrus fruit. The whole SoCal ecosystem was changed from 1820 to 1948. Then it was “Katy Bar the door.” As a result, nothing is what is was in 1800. Not the indigenous presence. Not the idyllic country side. All man changed. And human nature has not changed at all: Blame someone, something else than us. Pogo saw through that. Conflagrations are the enemy and we are the conflagration cause. Not climate. Not weather. Not topography. We are too many to burn the excess threatening fuels. We are too many to even get the hell out of the way, abandoning cars to run for the sea.

    We are not too many to be unable to judiciously remove the fuel threat. We are likely too cheap and/or stupid to. CCC did that when the work was too
    little and idle labor too much/many. So young men with hoes removed fuel. Fenced the unclaimed public domain to designate ranges. Built fire roads for trucks that replaced pack trains hauling stuff to remote fire crews.

    One would hope America is capable solving the problems. Serial litigation with EAJA financing is an impediment. Take the planners and give them a McCloud or Pulaski like it was when I was a young man on the Oxbow fire in 1966. A Weyerhaeuser management trainee dispatched to the fire line. Hook tenders were squad bosses. “All a–holes and elbows, men. Get at it like ya was killing’ snakes.”

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