California spends billions rebuilding burned towns. The case for calling it quits
California has not been rebuilt. Not yet.
So I went to see it up close.
I drove down the coast, east, inland and south, stopping at every place burned and devastated in the latest state of California’s long history of devastation. I wanted to see it as it was, to see the scars. The places where there used to be homes, schools, churches, businesses, parks.
I wanted to walk where others couldn’t, or had never been allowed to. I drove into the countryside, passing through the hills and valleys where many people have disappeared. We’re talking about more than half a million people, by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection estimates in 2003. All told, 1,869 people disappeared in the state.
But I didn’t stop because they disappeared. I drove because California can be built again. Because California can have a better life than so many lost lives could ever have provided.
The rebuilding can begin by stopping the madness of the past.
It was supposed to be a bright spring morning. California’s spring brings the promise of warmer weather. The temperature in Sacramento is expected to reach 80 degrees to 90 degrees, in San Francisco it’s 80 degrees to 87 degrees. It’s supposed to be another gorgeous day.
But the state had endured another summer of heat. The wildfires that raged through state parks, the city of Sacramento and other parts of California in the summer of 2003 were an inferno. The temperatures soared well above 100 degrees. The state was under the worst of a drought, with more dryness than normal, since the 1930s.
The summer was in the worst shape of its century-long era. Many believed California’s climate was going to change drastically. California would become hotter, drier and more prone to wildfires. But then came
