One Week
Dante's View is not a literary allusion. The terraced garden in Los Angeles's Griffith Park is actually named for the man who first tended the site. But the fire that ravaged that garden last week could have come right out of the Italian poet's imagination. With early-season infernos coast to coast, it threatens to be another record year for wildfires. Georgia saw its worst in a half century, while blazes in Florida got so bad the governor wished for a tropical storm. As Los Angeles battled to save the park's famed Griffith Observatory, hundreds of people on nearby Santa Catalina Island covered their faces with towels and evacuated by ferry.
Drought conditions have continued to intensify in the West since last year, with an already dry Southern California getting half its usual rainfall. Warmer-than-normal temperatures and early snow runoff portend fire-friendly conditions all summer.
But the weather isn't entirely to blame for the soaring wildfire toll. Americans are moving to western states in droves, seeking out rustic areas where blazes are particularly common. With more areas populated, firefighters have fewer opportunities to let fires burn, which eliminates dead timber and prevents uncontrollable conflagrations later.
The cost of these choices is still being tallied, though so far only in property, not lives. L.A. officials say it could take a decade before the still-smoldering Griffith Park fully recovers. By week's end, Santa Catalina was no longer the place celebrated in the 1950s hit "26 Miles" by the Four Preps: "a tropical heaven out in the ocean, covered with trees and girls." As Dante knew, it's a long road back to paradise.
This story appears in the May 21, 2007 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.