Through the Misty Dawn - Editorial

Year in and year out we read about the raging forest fires in the West. Thousands of homes have been damaged and countless lives have been lost. The continuing saga commands a new approach to the problem.

Near my home town of Springfield, Ohio many years ago they built a reservoir and named it after a very fine congressman, Clarence J. Brown. My suggestion is that throughout the West where forest fires continually cause millions of dollars in damage and loss of life and valuable resources, reservoirs be built with underground water lines that could be used to combat the fires. For those that live near the conflagrations, the Armageddon has already arrived.

I visualize as many as 100 such reservoirs and maybe far more. If federal dollars can be spent on dams and levees in flood prone areas such as New Orleans, federal dollars can be spent for preventive measures that would limit the destruction by forest fires in areas prone to such massive devastation. The cost would be high and the effects would have certain limitations as with any preventive measure. But the savings in lives and property would be well worth the expense to current and all future generations.

To wait and watch the destruction year in and year out, without pragmatic remedies is no different than waiting out a tornado in your living room. When we needed highways Ike Eisenhower built them. When we needed dams years ago, we built them. No differently airports, armies, airplanes and numerous other public services.

The way to begin is to build one near a populated area that suffers the consequences of such raging infernos. A combative remedy is long over due.

Richard Englefield

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• #2 Comment from jayveerhapsody 
  10/19/06 2:49 AM | Permalink

  I vividly remember the many fierce autumnal wildfires that raged in California when I used to live there. Your suggestion would indeed save property and lives. I only recently discovered your journal and greatly appreciate your thoughts & insight, especially since I am also a musician.  I've had several previous AOL blogs, but my latest one is only a few weeks old.
                      Jon
                                  http://journals.aol.com/jayveerhapsody/LoneStarConcerto/
  
• #1 Comment from love2sing2007 
  9/4/06 10:01 AM | Permalink

  I found your journal through Angela.
  
  You make a lot of sense in this entry, and I quite agree with you.  
  
  I look at your interests, composer and journalist, and I think God must have lead me to you.  I am a Senior in high school and am considering the same type of careers.  I still have yet to work out the specifics.  
  Regards, Kellen
  http://journals.aol.com/love2sing2007/FaithinRomanCatholicism