Posted by Suspicious, a resident of the Crescent Park neighborhood, on Jul 7, 2007 at 4:57 pm

Prediction: The Dish area stays closed throughout the remainder of 2007. While they have not yet determined what the cause was of either fire (though arson has been suggested by several officials for the first), they need more time to 'prevent another grass fire from igniting'.

Posted by Fred, a resident of the Barron Park neighborhood, on Jul 7, 2007 at 5:40 pm

Suspicious, what exactly are you suspicious of? While the above post seems merely cynical and sarcastic, I believe you also posted on another thread that Stanford may have itself started the second fire (or perhaps you meant both fires) to achieve development goals. (You also suggested that a Fire Dept employee may have set it!)

It struck me that I would very much hate to have someone accuse me of that (I believe committing such an act would be a crime), as I am sure you would.

Imagine if they re-opened the facility today, there were a fire tomorrow, and a PA resident was killed. Then it was revealed that firebreaks were insufficient, and some safety manager had written an internal memo to that effect, and the General Counsel had warned the appropriate person not to re-open. In addition to the human tragedy, big lawsuit, very bad press.

So I am sure that Stanford guards and pursues its own interests - no doubt, so do we all. But I do show them some deference in how they handle the Foothills catching on fire. And I certainly hope we all think twice before accusing key institutions in our community, like Stanford and our PAFD, of crimes without some sort of evidence.

My two cents,

Fred