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" During my brief time as a forest ranger in the employ of the Commonwealth (God save it!), I was involved in only one forest fire, and it was a very small one, but it was one of the most frightening experiences of my life, largely because there was an overwhelming sense that the fire could not be contained, that it could pop up anywhere, behind you or in front of you, straight up out of the ground. I can&amp;#039;t even imagine what&amp;#039;s going on with the people trying to fight the Yarnell Hill fire in Arizona, 19 of whom died almost at once last night, because that one really appears to be utterly beyond control.  The fire is currently burning with zero containment and has grown well past 2,000 acres. Chuck and Ninabill Overmyer said they lost their two-story Tudor-style house in a community just southwest of Yarnell. They had bought the home seven years ago on the Fourth of July, for their seventh anniversary. On Sunday afternoon, Ninabill decided to take a nap around 1:30 p.m. &amp;quot;The next thing I know, he&amp;#039;s bouncing me off the couch telling me we&amp;#039;re being evacuated,&amp;quot; she said. Chuck frantically tried to rescue their hot rod and three classic cars by preparing to tow them out. He was only able to hook up the hot rod before the fire had traveled from 300 yards to only about 40 feet away. &amp;quot;There were embers hitting us on the head,&amp;quot; Ninabill said. She told him they needed to leave right then. &amp;quot;We went through the flames to get out,&amp;quot; Chuck said, estimating that if they had waited minutes more, they would have died. The smoke was so thick that they could not see the front of the car, they said. &amp;quot;I have never felt anything that hot in my entire life,&amp;quot; Ninabill said. &amp;quot;The wind was blowing so hard, it was truly a firestorm.&amp;quot; The firefighters who died in Arizona were the elite of their trade, the de facto special forces of the people who fight wildfires and forest fires in this country. And the fire simply rolled them up. Of course, it would be a terrible thing to &amp;quot;politicize&amp;quot; this tragedy, but we feel constrained to point out that, because of the genius strategy of &amp;quot;sequestration&amp;quot; -- wherein Republican vandalism and the president&amp;#039;s gift for eleventy-dimensional chess have combined to give us a New Normal of austerity while the rest of the world is abandoning the concept -- our capacity to fight fires like the one in Arizona has been hampered.  Agriculture Secretary Vilsack said &amp;quot;I hope we can get through this fire season without any fatalities.&amp;quot;  Sorry, Tom. And, not for nothing, but the &amp;quot;budget&amp;quot; proposed by numbers whiz Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny starver from Wisconsin, would cut these programs even more deeply. And, of course, we are loath to &amp;quot;politicize&amp;quot; this tragedy by saying that wildfires like the one in Arizona have been perfectly predictable to anyone who&amp;#039;s been studying the effects of The Great Climate Change Hoax over the past couple of decades. But the longer-term trend in large, longer-lasting fires looks to be driven at least in part by global warming, which most atmospheric scientists attribute to a build-up of carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere - released through burning fossil fuels and through land-use changes. Researchers documented the change in a study published in 2006 - in the middle of a four-year period when wildfires consistently consumed more than 8 million acres a year in the US. The increase in larger fires began somewhat abruptly in the mid-1980s, according to the study, which analyzed fire, climate and hydrological data between 1970 and 2004. &amp;quot;This jump means something more than just the fuels,&amp;quot; says Swetnam, a member of the research team, referring to a buildup in scrub growth and brush in some terrain that has also fueled wildfires. The increase in larger, longer-lasting fires was most pronounced in the northern Rockies and at high elevations. &amp;quot;That argued more in favor of a climate effect than a Smokey Bear effect&amp;quot; in which humans have contributed to a buildup in fuels by interfering in natural fire cycles, he says. The climate change manifests itself as warmer temperatures and earlier springlike temperatures, which increases the likelihood of longer dry spells. You deny the phenomenon. Then you deny that the effects of the phenomenon have anything to do with the phenomenon. Then people die. This is the way we make policy today. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a18921/the-arizona-wildfires/>