"[The Los Alamos fire] started a hundred years ago when America quit burning the leaves and the twigs and the pine cones and the branches that fall off the trees."
...we had a fire over in Los Alamos a year ago, and people were blaming the people who started the fire. And I think it's very important that we recognize that those people didn't start the fire. The fire started a hundred years ago when America quit burning the leaves and the twigs and the pine cones and the branches that fall off the trees. That builds up for a hundred years, and while it may be me who set the match to do the fire, it's not that individual who set up these catastrophic fire conditions that burned out Los Alamos, that burned out the Leroux Fire. And that's simply the thing that started about 1900. And a hundred years later we're seeing that those fuel buildups are so high that it causes catastrophic wildfires, crown fires, the whole forest is burning. And that's where we are today.