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Reacting to wild speculation in social media about the cause of the wildfires that devastated Napa and Sonoma, Mickey Huff of Project Censored joins me to talk about the most likely causes.Huff is Professor of Social Science and History at Diablo Valley College, Director of Project Censored at Sonoma State U, co-editor of Censored 2018 and co-host of the Project Censored radio program on KPFA, Berkeley.
To start, we each describe our history of challenging “official” reports on controversial events, from 9/11 to the recent mass shooting in Las Vegas. The social media commentary–largely from people who display great ignorance of the local conditions and likely causes–reached a level of extreme speculation. In some cases self-styled “experts” declared they already know it was weather weapons, microwaves, directed energy weapons or other factors that are not supported by any evidence we’ve seen.
We comment on this blog post by Mike Davis, which offers a thoughtful analysis of the political, economic, and policy influences that created the environment where bone-dry onshore winds fueled the fast-moving fires that destroyed 6,800 homes and killed 42 in Napa and Sonoma. We also refer to an essay by Susan Maret about conspiracy bias, which appeared in Censored 2017.
Here are my notes, reflecting many of the comments in the exchange with Huff.
Wine country fires
Claims of:
–military grade accelerants (melted car window)
–directed energy weapons
–green blob (FB eyewitness, looks like fake profile)
–tree burning inside out (microwaves, w/admission that X-rays can’t penetrate)
–smart meters
–month old Santa Rosa arson report, FB post of small fire near Middletown
–chemtrails and HAARP weather weapons
–ISIS
–UN Agenda 21
Reality:
–we are at tail of dry season after big rains produced tons of fuel that was baked in record heat waves including Labor Day 110 for 4 days
–over 100 million dead trees, unknown how many were sick, damaged, part dead
(our oak tree died in stages due to drought, sudden oak syndrome)
–Santa Ana/Diablo onshore winds with 2% humidity
–fire danger was forecast Oct 8
–PG&E power lines are likely culprit
–winds gusted to 81 mph
–Coffey Park had lower fire standards, was not in hazard zone
–very few brick or stone houses here, 95% wood
–unclear on how gas lines added as houses burned
–one FB report of arson, none confirmed so far by authorities
I await forensics, but these factors exclude the pseudo-science speculation, based on current information