Officials: Boy with matches started fire
SANTA CLARITA, Calif. - Officials blamed a wildfire that consumed more than 38,000 acres and destroyed 21 homes last week on a boy playing with matches, and said they would ask a prosecutor to consider the case.
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The boy, whose name and age were not released, admitted to sparking the fire on Oct. 21, Los Angeles County sheriff's Sgt. Diane Hecht said Tuesday. Ferocious winds helped it quickly spread.
"He admitted to playing with matches and accidentally starting the fire," Hecht said in a statement.
The boy was released to his parents, and the case will be presented to the district attorney's office, Hecht said. It was not clear if he had been arrested or cited by detectives.
The fire began in an area near Agua Dulce and quickly spread. It was among 15 or so major wildfires that destroyed some 2,100 homes and blackened 809 square miles from Los Angeles to the Mexican border last week. Seven deaths were blamed directly on the fires, six evacuees died of natural causes and one person died of a fall.
Authorities arrested five people for arson during that period, but none have been linked to any of the major blazes.
All but four of the blazes are now fully contained. Firefighters on Wednesday continued to cut lines around the remaining fires and kept a close eye on the weather.
The boy was sent to bed without any supper and his XBox was taken away for one week. The four thousand people still living in the dugout of Qualcomm Stadium because their houses are charred piles of ash think this was a fair punishment.
Uh-uh. That asshole doesn't live on the West Coast. He's all yours.
As for the fire. I was watching the news and some women was on there comparing the fires to Hurricane Katrina and her daughter was traumatized because she had lost her first bike in the fire. Now, I sympathize because having your house burn down would REALLY suck. But losing a bike is not the end of the world. And what you experienced is certainly NOTHING like Katrina. You lived in WASPY McWhiteyville. The people in New Orleans were poverty level black neighborhoods. They are STILL recovering years later.
So shut the fuck up. Insurance will pay for it, you cracker bitch.
NO HANDLEBARS HAN SHOT. FIRST! PERIOD. NO HANDLEBARS MORE COWBELL! NO HANDLEBARS GO FUCK YOURSELF™
not to mention that katrina displaced hundreds of thousands of people, whereas this wildfire, while obviously a huge ordeal, has affected a couple thousand. not saying it's not a tragedy, but not nearly on the same scale.
Katrina levelled an entire region of the country, a region which was historically mostly poor minorities. Two years later, jackshit has been done.
These fires burned about 2,000 homes in one of the richest areas of the country. Already, Schwarzenegger and Bush have come in to suck their dicks. Two thousand homes is a lot of houses, but what the media isn't telling you (and what Zero probably knows, being from the same neck of the woods) is that A) San Diego is a fucking monstrously large city, both in area and population; and B) the houses in the Rancho Bernardo area are so incredibly tightly packed McMansions that 2,000 homes is probably about 5-10 square miles.
I'm not saying it's not horrible to lose your home, or that I don't sympathize. But if you live in a flood zone because you're too poor to live somewhere else, and you can't get insurance because you're in a flood zone, and your house, community, and place of employment are all wiped out because the same government that fucks you daily refuses to acknowledge global warming exists and has destroyed the wetlands that offer natural protection, it's considerably different from having your mansion burned in a fire that you have full coverage for. It's a tragedy, but to compare it to Katrina is just despicable.
*--For behavior unbecoming anyone, perpetrated in real time over an extended--AH, FUCK IT! MORE MALIBU, BITCHES!!
This is exactly why I don't watch the news anymore. It's just to depressing.
New Orleans is slowly sinking into the Gulf of Mexico. It's nature's way of saying "Get the hell out". No amount of engineering can keep another hurricane from taking it out again.
In California, between fires, mudslides, and earthquakes, they should restrict where things are built.
I don't see why the government should give money to people in Southern California, New Orleans, or anywhere else that is that prone to natural disasters of that magnitude.
Rogue II wrote:By the way, I decided to be Negative Boy for Halloween.
I was going to be Rogue II for Halloween, but I couldn't find Dr. Doom's tiny Latverian cock to put in my mouth, so the rest of the costume seemed superfluous.
Instead I'm going as Hillary Clinton. Scariest living thing.
Updating the previous story:
Fires spew tons of global warming gas
WASHINGTON - In one week, Southern California's wildfires spewed the same amount of carbon dioxide — the primary global warming gas — as the state's power plants and vehicles did, scientists figure.
A new study by two Colorado researchers shows that U.S. wildfires pump a significant amount of the greenhouse gas into the air each year, more than the state of Pennsylvania does. It raises questions about how useful it is to plant trees to offset rising carbon dioxide emissions and soothe environmental consciences.
Because the California wildfires occurred just as the study was about to be published, the researchers calculated how much carbon dioxide was likely to come from the devastating blazes Oct. 19-26. It's a lot: 8.7 million tons.
That's more than the state of Vermont produces in a year. And it's also more than the 6 million tons estimated by California's air control agency, which used a different calculation method.
On average, wildfires in the United States each year pump 322 million tons of carbon dioxide. That's about 5 percent of what the country emits by burning fossil fuels, such as gasoline and coal, according to the new research published online Thursday in the peer-reviewed journal Carbon Balance and Management.
Last week, the California Air Resources Board estimated that just under 6 million tons of carbon dioxide were released by the recent fires. The board estimates that for every acre burned, the carbon dioxide emissions are equivalent to two cars driven for a year, said board spokesman Stanley Young. More than half a million acres have burned in Southern California.
Global warming can now be blamed on the young lad in the original news article. That leads this reporter to believe that Smokey the Bear and his "Only you can prevent forrest fires" campaign is no longer effective. This Newsbot would like to move for a vote of no confidence in Smokey.
newsbitch wrote:It raises questions about how useful it is to plant trees to offset rising carbon dioxide emissions and soothe environmental consciences.
i really hope that's one of the fake quotes. because, seriously, that's just retarded logic.
The so-called "Greenhouse Effect" isn't ruining the environment. It's simply changing what liberals refer to as "a comfortable living condition" in regards to temperature, humidity, weather patterns, etc. Which, as anyone whos ever heard of the multiple "Ice Ages" this planet has had over umpteen centuries, knows is an inevitable cycle. "Oh boo fucking hoo, it's all hot and sticky. i'm uncomfortable. let's blame the industrial comsumer complex for making our ipods and laptops and gps and DVD players." You fucking pansies. The "environment" will be here long after your faggy liberal asses are all dead and buried. So shut the fuck up and let real people run the country. And somebody shit that fat bitch Oprah up. She knows as much about politics and the environment as I know about coal mining.
