It is extremely painful to watch the images of homes burning, all the more so because my late Uncle and Aunt were burned out of their Santa Barbara home in a wildfire almost two decades ago. Their household appliances were reduced to puddles of shiny metal when we visited them shortly after they were able to get access to their former home. They lost all their photos (and everything else), so family members made copies of our old family pictures. Other family treasures were not so easily replaced.

The FBI alerted law enforcement agencies last month that an al-Qaeda terrorist now in detention had talked of masterminding a plot to set a series of devastating forest fires around the western United States.