Fight fire with fire, not news scare and stupidity

TUCSON -- Fire! shouts the news everyday. Fires are natural this time of year, and helpful to the health of southwestern forests.

Have you been up to Mt. Lemmon lately to see the great natural restoration and return of aspen forests after the aspen fire? It looks great.

Every year the media bumbles this issue, focusing only on fear and not fact. Reporters usually fail to point out that urban sprawl in to forested areas in AZ is the real problem, especially when city slickers move in and don't maintain defensible fire-safe spaces around their homes.

Don't you start a fire, but we should let the natural lightning caused fires burn. Our public forests need to and will burn, but they'll burn much bigger and hotter after years of vegetation build-up as smaller fires are put out. We have to stop doing this.

The feds (Forest Service, BLM, etc.) and states should stop spending billions and risking fire fighters' lives every summer trying to put out needed forest fires.