I have been watching the fires in LA. How awful!  I am sure glad I don't fight fires any more.  I was with the California Division of Forestry (Now Cal-Fire) for seven years, the last three attached to the Tulare County Fire Department. I have squirted an awful lot of the cool wet stuff on the hot red stuff. I have seen all kinds of fires from huge 50,000 acre forest fires, to packing house fires, to little shacks, and everything in between.  

When I moved to Montana, I got involved with a private fire company, fighting structure fires in our sparsely populated county. I have seen so much fire.  I have watches out local, well trained fire company stop a trailer house fire in it's tracks, and have seen a hotel totally lost. 

But the worst part of being a fireman, is watching the people who have lost everything. I can never forget a structure fire the day before Christmas, and the little kids standing crying in the yard, because not only dis they no longer have a bed, bout all their longed for gifts were under the tree. There would be no Christmas for them.

You get used to seeing dead bodies after a while, but you never get over the tragedy of watching people lose everything they have including a burned out no longer habitable house. 

Now watching the people in LA come up against an unstoppable fire makes my heart bleed for those valiant firefighters.  Imagine fighting a fire with a flame front 30 feet high, and burning so hot that it not only vitrifies the very soil, but burns houses to the ground in 10 minutes. And there's nothing you can do about it, because even with their modern equipment, excellent training, and water and slurry dropping aircraft, you can't catch it. 

Meanwhile, literately thousands of houses are being lost, and there are tens of thousands of little children crying in their yards.

Pray for our firefighters.

Lee Akers

January 21, 2025