Submitted for your review:
- You are driving down a street, cell phone to your ear, reaching for another fry with a cup of Coke wedged between your thighs, when a young boy darts into the street after a ball. You swerve and hit a parked car… who’s to blame?
- You know the land is below sea level, on a fault line, along a coast prone to hurricanes, but you build a million dollar house anyway. Nature huffs and puffs and blows your house down. Who should pay?
- The area you live in is prone to major fires but all you can do is ensure you have a good evacuation plan because the state has decided that brush thinning, removal of trees within feet of your house or even dead trees in some instances are all prohibited due to environmental concerns. A fire is started by an arsonist, another by downed power lines, another by lightning, and yet another by a child playing with matches. Who do you blame? Who should pay?
In each of these cases, the proximal cause is clearly defined. The child ran into the street, I had to swerve. The hurricane was a direct hit on our town and we lost everything. The fire was started by the little boy and thousands of acres burned.
As I’ve attempted to show in the examples above, “blame” should not end with the proximal cause. In fact, in many of these examples, the proximal cause may not even be related to the root cause, and it is the root cause which must be addressed to 1) determine liability and 2) prevent repeat events.
For example, if you had been focusing on the road instead of your fries and cell phone, perhaps you would have been able to react properly to a somewhat predictable event. You did not know a child would dart into the street at that very moment, but you did know the potential for that event existed and may even have experienced that event in the course of your driving history. Your actions increased the risk the subsequent event would occur, hitting the parked car or perhaps even the child.
Similarly, if you knew that building your house near the coast would eventually lead to your house being destroyed, whose fault is it when it blows down? And how much is government to blame for willingly accepting development in these areas in exchange for tax dollars?
In the case of the California fires, the fact that speculation, and in some cases known events ,about the proximal causes of the various fires, incudes lightning, downed power lines, arson, and just about anything else that can cause a spark, to some degree indicates that one or more fires was virtually inevitable. The 10-12 year old with a match is not the root cause of one of these fires; his act was one trigger event among a multitude of possible trigger events that lead to the fire. But the root cause or causes behind the magnitude of the fire and the subsequent damage are independent of the spark that caused the initial flame.
Problems are solved and risk events minimized by addressing root causes, not proximal causes. A simple test:
If I eliminate the cause, will the problem be solved and future risk be reduced or eliminated? If not, we are probably not dealing with a root cause.
The question that must be asked: What were the events that lead not only to the starting of the fire, but to the magnitude of the event? Anything that adds to the risk or adds to the magnitude of the event should be documented and addressed. That is the only way to reduce the risk of recurrence and the magnitude should the risk event be realized.
Will punishing the family of this child prevent future out of control fires from destroying thousands of acres and causing millions of dollars in damages? Of course not. Should the child be punished? Yes, as much as any other child who plays with matches and causes a fire. But should the blame for the magnitude of this event be placed upon his shoulders or that of his family’s? In my opinion, no. Not only would that not solve anything, it would allow those who need to address the root causes to hide behind the proximal cause.
And that will lead to more out of control fires.
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