Moraga has always liked playing games. Some lesser-known examples of sport have flourished within our boundaries, everything from Disc Golf to Hacky Sack competitions, but the latest game to arrive in MoTown is “The Guessing Game.”
If you live here, or even if you do not, you may know that two of this little burg’s biggest mysteries have origins within a few blocks of one another and have given rise to a bustling rumor mill the likes of which has gone unseen since those cattle mutilations set local tongues wagging up there in Eastern Oregon.
You may know that a trusted local man with an impeccable local pedigree was placed in a position of responsibility over a healthy sum of local money and, O My Stars, allegedly diverted it to his own use. Well, harumph and harangue, Good God Almighty… how dare he. Ask about the current state of the investigation into his updated version of the good ole shell game and federal officials ostensibly in charge of that work advise, in so many words, that they could tell us – but then they would have to kill us.
Ask about the cause of that “Perfect Storm” Fire on Merrill Circle as PG&E intentionally darkened the town and you’ll hear locals wax on earnestly about sparky generators, an arsonist, a UFO landing zone in Sanders Ranch and, most recently – a discarded vape pen.
Now, all of those things have been known to cause fires and certainly can’t be ruled out as a possible cause – especially since UFO activity over this town has grown significantly ever since our little burg added a biergarten to its coterie of commerce. Some strange things have been sighted after a night sampling flights of local brew, let us tell you.
But, with a lack of substantive information about the status of – we believe – ongoing investigations into our fires and our frauds, Moragans are left to do what they do best: guess. And heaven help you if you should disagree or, at least, appear to consider alternative causes because when the residents of this town get their mind set on something – they stay set.
This site, a steady chronicle of Truth, Justice, and the Suburban Way, has been pilloried by locals for not stating what appears obvious to so many: that the Merrill Fire was started by a wonky generator (something which appeared on our pages as a possibility while the fire was still smoldering); that an arsonist started the blaze (something we found difficult to believe but didn’t rule out) that a Midnight Toker kicked off the blaze (something we’ve heard about for, oh, a week now), and that a super keen aircraft exhibiting super luminous running lights and non-ballistic behavior has been landing out by the San Leandro Watershed for months.
What does it all mean? That people are human after all, that they steal and gossip and guess – and until we find that damned ever-elusive smoking gun (wait, was anyone target shooting on Merrill that night, no?) we’ll be bouncing from theory to theory and, just maybe, we’ll never really know for sure.
Now, wouldn’t that be a pain in the place we all sit down? Yes. It would. We want to know.
MPD Chief King stated last night at a Town Hall that his detective and an arson investigator from Con Fire found a vape pen at the fires point of origin. No more detail on how it got there, timing, who it belongs to, etc. but he has clearly ruled out arson and is keying in on the details surrounding the vape pen which was found in the grass in an empty lot on Merrill Circle.
A vape pen at the fires point of origin would make sense. I never thought it was a generator because I would think a generator would catch the home(s) on fire. The homes are still standing. I guess that’s what investigators are for…
Sure, except that as we saw during the Great Blackout folks discovered that those generators they bought the day before made noise and gave off fumes. Many people chose to deploy them well away from their homes…
You’re “anti-generator” and it’s causing you to not think outside of the box. Generators are necessary, but you can dislike them all you want. A liberal friend of mine goes into full disclosure about generators. Whatever…
“Anti-generator” – we’ll admit, we’ve been called a lot of things, but that’s a new one. The truth of the matter is we’ve had them, used them all our lives, but moved on to “other types of generators” when it became apparent they burned, and smelled, were pretty darn noisy and their fuel source was not renewable. So, we have generators, just not the kind that do those things.
Which brand do you use? Husband very interested after our gas gen smoked out the garage.