Are wildfires goverment's fault?

• Position: Tom Beamish points to poor Government management of population growth and forest resources - Brief Article

The raging fires that ravaged Southern California in the autumn of 2003 are related less to forests and more to the way government organizes activities in regards to woodlands, indicates Tom Beamish, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Davis, and author of Silent Spill: The Organization of an Industrial Crisis. "The catastrophic consequences of the fire resulted from the way that government manages population growth and forest resources in the United Statess," he says.

Beamish notes similarities between the forest fires and his study of an oil spill in Santa Barbara, Calif., that seeped out over a 40-year period with little notice from the 18. Federal and state agencies that had jurisdiction over the area. "None of the agencies or commercial organizations ... could see the leak as a 'spill,' and they didn't take responsibility for it because it took so long to become obvious," he contends...