Comments about ‘Oak City residents say miracles saved their homes from fast-moving fire’

Miracles?

The Miracle would have been for god to prevent the fire in the first place!

@A Scientist

A few things...

1. As a "scientist", no doubt you understand that forest fire is a necessity for a healthy alpine ecosystem...most conifers can't reproduce without fire. Part of God's plan is to have living things replenish themselves via reproduction. So why would God execute a miracle that goes against his plan?

2. It's not God's fault that man chooses to build houses in wildfire areas. If there hadn't been any houses there, there would have been no need for a "miracle".

3. People almost always use the word "miracle" in a figurative way, not literally. You may be reading too much into this.

Mr. Robin,

1. If God's "Plan" is to burn small towns, requiring the evacuation of "his" Girl's Camp, and resulting in deaths, then you have a weird "god". And are you claiming this fire was "started" by god? That is kind of sick, isn't it?

2. According to Mormon tradition, God inspired the settlement of Utah, including issuing "callings" for settlers to settle these southern Utah areas - settling in these "wildfire areas". Now you are claiming they were not following "god's plan"? Strange.

3. Residents of the town were quoted as saying, ""Us two think it's prayers," Julie Lee said." That is not figurative.

I'm all for sensing the divine, but I'm not comfortable proclaiming miracle for your good fortune when hundreds of others here and in Colorado are left homeless. Probably not intended, but feels like they're saying they were somehow more worthy of a miracle.

"Pure Dumb Luck" seems more appropriate to most things that do or don't happen in life.

It sounds miraculous to me. The fire "split" and went around the town.

The miracles are not in which house was spared as opposed to which house burned, but is often much deeper in how lives were effected as a result of either extreme scenario.

When a wild fire passes through and spares the inhabitants - that is a miracle. When an entire neighborhood burns to the ground, but all survived, that too might well be a miracle.

When death occurs and people are drawn together and reshape their lives in a better direction, that too can be a miracle. But to lay out the claim that if the fire missed you it equals a miracle and if it didn't, its a curse - is missing the point.

Bad things happen to good people, and good people respond to bad things with increased determination to be better than they were before.