Fire is Bad No Matter Who It Hits

There’s a horrible fire burning many home in the hills above Montecito, California.

Believe I or not, politic intrudes on my thoughts even as I pray for the firefighters and the people whose property is threatened or has already been destroyed. Why, you ask?

Because it reminds me of another fire almost twenty years ago, when I was in law school, where politics raised its ugly head in the face of tragedy.

You see, Montecito — just south of Santa Barbara — is a ritzy area. And that’s putting it mildly.  The homes there are amazing, worth millions, and the town is home (at least part of the year) to many celebrities, including Oprah Winfrey.  So we’re talking about some very wealthy people losing their homes and their contents.  The last estimate they gave on the news was more than 100 homes lost.

The fire nearly 20 years ago hit a similarly prosperous area in hills in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Actually, that area was probably less prosperous.  And I don’t remember news of of any celebrity residents.

And in the aftermath of that fire, some expressed the sentiment that the fire was not so bad because it had hit some rich folks.  Some went so far as believing that these rich folks essentially had it coming as some kind of karmic justice for trampling on the rest of society.

Don’t ask me for links.  (This was nearly 20 years ago.)  Don’t ask me for specific instances of people expressing this.  I think these thoughts came from classmates, but they could have come from other sources as well.  But I remember very clearly telling my wife how amazed I was by this reaction.

So, now I’m wondering if it is going to happen again.  I’m no longer on a campus, so I’m not likely to run across the demographic segment most likely to express such sentiments.  I’d like to think no one will be thinking that way his time around.  But I fear that the only thing that may prevent it is the fact that Hollywood types are among those who will suffer loss.

I’m not preemptively castigating people.  I’m hoping there’s no one to castigate.