End of the line

Re “Driving past the bullet train,” Nov. 18

With the recent deadly wildfires in our state and the many more to come that will make such disasters our “new normal,” I think we need to stop work on the high-speed train and invest billions instead in wildfire prevention, better methods for fighting fires, upgraded emergency alert systems, better infrastructure for evacuation and, especially, new technologies to “scrub” our air.

The death toll from these latest fires will never accurately be known because the elderly, the young, the sick and the frail will die prematurely because of the heart and lung conditions aggravated by the hazardous air quality. Jessea Greenman Oakland