After an unseasonably, but not unprecedented, warm winter, the West is bone dry, water supplies are dangerously low, and wildfire risk is fearfully high. Parts of Colorado and Utah are infernos that, despite Herculean efforts and the deaths of three young firefighters, are not contained.

Thank God, these fires are not as bad as those Colorado suffered in 2020. But nonetheless, early drought conditions have folks spooked and surveying evacuation routes. Significantly, nearly 90% of wildfires are human-caused, even without lunatics like the New Mexican arrested for lighting a blaze along my town’s main thoroughfare.