It happens every year. Every year there are brush fires that denude the hillsides, at the same time, burning out dozens of homes. Then, a few months later when the rains come, there is no foliage to anchor the ground. It becomes saturated, turns to mud, and slides, wiping out a lot of the homes that the fires didn't get. Yet, people continue to build and live there. Most people who are burned out or mud-flooded out insist on rebuilding in the same location.

A similar thing happens in Washington State where I live. There are areas in western Washington that flood almost every year. And they have all during recorded history, so people can hardly say they are not aware. Yet, real estate developers build houses on these flood plains (for some strange reason, land is cheap there), then proceed to sell the houses to people who are either gullible or pig-headed, or a combination of both.

Neither California nor Washington seem to be able to get laws past preventing or discouraging people from building and living in those areas. Real estate developers seem to have pretty strong lobbies. But where, I wonder, are the insurance companies that wind up paying for all the damage? Perhaps they make more in inflated premiums than they lose in pay-outs, I don't really know.

If Arnie sounded a bit exasperated and implied that it was their own damned fault for choosing to live there, he may very well be right. They can hardly claim that they were ignorant of what might happen.

I believe it was Einstein who defined insanity as doing the same thing again and again while each time expecting a different result.

Don Firth