More reports of government incompetence in California fires…

Some blog readers, and readers of my LewRockwell.com column on the fires, have complained that I criticized government too harshly in its efforts to fight the fires. But the evidence just keeps coming in that the government really was unprepared and incompetent.

Check out my previous blog quoting San Diego anti-tax activist Richard Rider.

And the L.A. Times reported on more government foul-ups:

Before the Santiago fire started in the hills northeast of Irvine, the Orange County fire department already had been hobbled.

Its fire engines were staffed below national standards, it had fewer firefighters per capita than neighboring counties, and its army of men and women ready to fight the blaze may have been weakened by changes in the county’s volunteer firefighter program.

Making matters worse, local crews and equipment had been sent to the Malibu fire, as had reinforcements from the state. Aircraft remained grounded because of the wind and bureaucratic obstacles.

“We’re out there with a handful of crews trying to stop this big fire, and all we could do was just put out spot fires,” said Chip Prather, chief of the Orange County Fire Authority. “It would have been great to have the cavalry come in, but there were several fires burning, and it was taking time for the resources to get here.”

As a result, the blaze that began last Sunday punched through the county’s defenses, destroying at least 16 homes, threatening more than 3,000 and forcing tens of thousands of residents to evacuate.

Orange County’s problems with the Santiago fire illustrate a recurrent pattern in much of Southern California — county fire departments that find themselves ill-equipped to handle a major blaze.

Now, why do we pay such massive taxes — the state income tax alone here in California maxes out at 10.3%, and most middle-class folks pay 9.3%, and the sales tax is 7.7.% here in Orange County — when government won’t even protect our homes from fires?