Neighbor: Boy who started Calif. fire a 'good kid'

[Ilikemuppets]

I'm sure many of you have heard that a 10 year old boy helped started the wild fires in California by now. I kinda don't know what to exactly say here. But it can't be good for his parents. Just wondering what your opinions on it might be? I mean obviously it is terrible though.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071102/ap_on_re_us/california_wildfires

 

[Beakerfan]

As a Californian, I feel bad for the kid and his family, but I say that we shouldn't worry about that right now. What we need to do is to focus on cleaning up the damage and then find ways to prevent this from happening again. Fires are pretty common down in SoCal, and the authorities need to start thinking of ways to prevent them from getting out of control so fast. They can start by ignoring the enviromentalists who want to "preserve" all the trees down there by leaving everything exactly the way it is. They need to clean up all the dead brush and dead trees that are down there.

 

[Ilikemuppets]

I do see what you mean. I know people are coming from all over to help out with the damages.

 

[D'Snowth]

I'm with William... I'm at a loss for words about all of this... I mean... did he do it on purpose? Was it an accident? Has he been labeled an arsonist? Was he an innocent victim of circumstance? I mean... maybe I'd have more to say about this had I actually been effected by it, but since I'm all the way over on the other coast, I'm not really effected by it.

 

[Beakerfan]

I cant believe they let him go LIKE NOTHING HAPPEND!

Yes it was an accident,but they have ultimatly opened his family up to severe lawsuits (By telling all who did it) (You know how the world is) and i think the kid should be strongly made aware of JUST HOW MUCH DAMAGE AND PAIN HE HAS CAUSED!

DUDE! THE KIDS TEN! Do YOU have a firm grasp on how much damage and pain was caused? I live in California! Believe it or not, stuff like this happens ALOT! Especially in southern California! We shouldn't be worrying about the poor kid right now, we need to be worrying about what we can do to fix the damage! Punishing that boy isn't going to solve anything! Seems to me having your house and everything around it burnt down is punishment enough.

The fire was upsetting and frightening enough as it is. I don't want to hear about how "that kid needs to be punished". The fire could have EASILY happened without that kids help! IT WAS AN ACCIDENT!

And, there were THREE starting points for this fire. It was three fires which combined into one big one. So it wasn't entirely the kid's fault.

I'm sorry for being so angry, but there is an order in which we need to go about things in order to help the rest of California recover from this fire. Half of my family lives down there, as well as a good portion of my friends. All I care about right now is helping them fix the damage, and punishing a ten year old for playing with matches is not going to fix it.