West Coast Observer: A Library Fire

By William Silveira





I live so close to Porterville, California, that I didn’t need to read Time’s article “Boys, 13, Charged with Murder for Fire at California Library That Killed 2 Firefighters” to learn about the fire on February 28:

Flames engulf the public library in Porterville]

[Involuntary manslaughter^*] charges have been filed against two 13-year-old boys suspected of starting a blaze that killed two firefighters at a central California library.
    Police said the boys were arrested after they were seen running from Porterville City Library shortly after flames erupted on the afternoon of Feb. 18.
    The Tulare County District Attorney’s Office on Friday filed two counts of murder with special circumstances of multiple murders and arson, the Visalia Times Delta reported….
    In California, children under 14 can’t be tried as adults, even if they are charged with serious and violent felonies, such as murder.

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[Note: The article used the term “murder,” but the charge was involuntary manslaughter, the doing of a grossly negligent act that reasonably and foreseeably could cause death.]

While the Porterville public library was not the ancient library at Alexandria, Egypt, it was nonetheless a valuable asset for a poor community in which the per capita income is $17,000 per year. The library’s loss was huge. Libraries are repositories of knowledge and intellectual pleasures (novels, short stories, perhaps recordings of books to read by listening, etc.). Much that might be found in a library can be found on-line, but many people need the guidance of a competent librarian to help them find specific items and also teach them how to do their own searches.
    A library is more than a repository of knowledge; it can also teach how to acquire knowledge. The existence of a library in a locale signifies that the people there, generally, find value in such things. I think it telling that when Trump made a swing through the county for a meeting with his fat-cat farmer donors, he piously acknowledged the library’s destruction, but he offered not one cent towards its reconstruction. Ah yes, hypocrisy blooms infernal.

Marylin and I went to Porterville last week to have lunch with Shirley Skufca Hickman, whose latest book about her experiences at Tulare Union High School has just been published: Rocky Road Is More Than a Candy Bar. We learned a bit more about the two boys who allegedly started the fire.
    Shirley told us that the boys had behaved disruptively on more than one occasion in the past – apparently without suffering appropriate consequences for it, like being barred from the library or maybe being barred from accompanying each other in the library. They apparently did not care for or value the things that I have mentioned or that you might mention when speaking about libraries. For them the library was a place in which they could give vent to their destructive impulses, expressing their contempt for what the library represented.
    About that “involuntary” manslaughter charge, I think it can be argued that the miscreants deliberately and intentionally, not involuntarily, committed a dangerous act (setting paper on fire in an old library), which could justify a charge of second degree murder. It can be argued that they acted with malicious intent, that they bore a grudge against the library for having been required to leave on other occasions for their out-of-control behaviors. And while they probably did not need incentive for their actions, there is evidence they were playing violent video games on a computer in the library.
    I have no idea whether the boys have any particular form of political allegiance, but I frankly think that anyone who would do such an act as setting fire to a library is no different in mentality from white supremacists – philistines and scofflaws. The act went beyond stupidity and recklessness and constituted willful, antisocial misconduct.

Tragically, the library was ill-equipped to deal with such a fire – not even a fire extinguisher was readily available. The City of Porterville should not escape some blame for the fire. While the two boys had been required previously to leave the library, after a second offense they really should have been barred from entry.
    However blame is apportioned, a poor community has lost a valuable resource.

Copyright © 2020 by William Silveira