Ross: Do caravans or deadly wildfires threaten America more?

I remember when I was about 5 years old, a salesman once came to our home to sell some kind of alarm system.

And to close the deal – he had a little metal doll house. He put it on the kitchen table – I’m guessing he’d primed it with lighter fluid – and he set a match to it. Instantly, the flames were licking out from the windows.

I had nightmares for weeks. There is nothing quite so terrifying as realizing everything you know – your home, your community – could just disappear. But that’s what we’re seeing in California right now.

I realize California is a special case:  It’s experiencing what’s called negative rain. It’s so dry, the air is actually sucking water out of the ground.

But here it is November, and wildfires are still happening. And the projections show that as global temperatures creep higher, it will happen more frequently. Do we blame man-made global warming? Or is this just the way nature has been cleaning house for millions of years?

Probably both. But at this point, who cares? Whatever it is, we’re not ready for it. Our current national security priority in California has been to protect it from that caravan. Which is fine, but national security also needs to include finding ways to keep entire suburbs from burning to the ground.

There are now 5,700 soldiers helping to fortify the California border. But it seems to me that what would really protect California — building better fire breaks.

Follow @http://www.twitter.com/thedaveross