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Nature Wins Again
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The thing I get out of this article looking at whether brush-clearing regulations had an effect on fighting the wildfires -- some say they helped a little, some say they didn't work -- is whether there's anything at all you can do, legislatively or otherwise, to battle fires when they're driven by hurricane-force winds and incredibly dry conditions. Can humans even hope to stop nature when extreme conditions exist? I think that clearing brush is a good idea and that laws and enforcement can help slow the spread of a fire, and the idea someone had of requiring sprinkler and other systems in fire-prone areas couldn't hurt, but, ultimately, when an 80 mile an hour wind picks an ember up and drops it on a house, there's no regulation out there that's going to stop that. (New York Times)
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