I woke up this morning to a very orange sunrise as the smoke from the fires over the last few days dissipates.  It is probably good news because the smoke dispersing means that the wind has died down.  We were perfectly safe this time.  The nearest fire was in Yorba Linda about 15 miles away as the crow flies.  It is very sad to learn that people have lost all of their possessions.  The good news is that there have been no reports of people losing their lives.  We had a fire in Sierra Madre in the spring and I wrote about it extensively.

One of the important things to do is to put it in perspective.  There are about 3 million homes in the Los Angeles area and less than a thousand of them have burned.  About 3/100’s of a percent.  It is tragic for the individuals but compared to 50% of the homes in New Orleans being damaged by Katrina it is minor. It also means that there are 2,999,000 that are not damaged by this fire.  The video footage of fires burning down hillsides at night is compelling and TV news shows so much of it, on an endless loop, that we start to believe that the whole world is burning.  It is not. Remember much of the media have, in the words of Marek Kohn “devoted themselves to the art of making the middle class afraid.”