California fires and other disasters

By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist

Quick: Do you feel more sympathy for the Californians who lost their homes to fire this week, or the North Carolinians flooded out back in the early fall? Does it make any difference to you at all? Will you feel sympathy for people with beach homes flooded out?

The common population seems jealous and resentful of the portion of the population well-monied. Why is this? Because they can’t build a house on the beach or in the Palisades north of Los Angeles?

We talk about environmental problems. Some of them are obvious, like leaking raw petroleum on the earth’s surface. Others are not so obvious, like the raging controversy about excessive carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

This week, I have seen commentary arguing that the fires in California are caused by environmental problems. I will heartily agree – wealthy people of means building houses where they should never be built. Same goes for flooding beach houses. Homes should never have been built there to start with.

The environmental disaster, taken as a whole, is humans intruding on places not meant for humans.

Then how about the mountains of western North Carolina? A portion of this might be the same issue.

Yes, I see much of the environmental argument turned on its head when we really get serious about it.

New York City is a great example of what I mean. New York City (and many other large coastal cities around the world) had perfect layouts when the way to get from one part of the city to another was by ferry, first human-powered, then steam-powered.  

But if you were going to build New York from scratch today, you would never build it in its current location. With modern transportation systems, you would build it far inland on dry land, preferably somewhere where the soils and subsurface are conducive to carrying the weight of large buildings without massive piling.

When I think of a great city well located, I think of Madrid, Spain. Its location is no fault of modern planners, and it is as older than New York. It just got lucky.

So, I come back to jealousy and criticism of the rich and famous. Do we want to be like them so we can be philanthropists or so we can build our mansion in the sky that defies the order of nature?

And where does this leave my sympathy? I have to admit to being more sympathetic to some of the people of western North Carolina because a substantial portion of them lived up the hollers and down near the creek beds, not in mansions but in common housing, if not shacks. I am sorry the people in California have experienced such devastation, but I hope they don’t build back there.

Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga. and is a columnist for The Highland County Press.