They’re still burning in Orange County, San Bernardino County (Slide Fire) and San Diego, so this may be premature but being me, I’m going to jump in anyway with some random, scattered thoughts.

FEMA: I’m not a reporter, but I play one on TV
I mentioned in my earlier post that FEMA appeared to be using the fires to trumpet how they’ve improved since Hurricane Katrina.  I’m not sure how they thought staging a press conference with FEMA employees posing as reporters asking questions was evidence of change.  What mystifies me is this:  Why didn’t they just do a video or whatever answering what they thought would be frequently-asked questions and slap it up on YouTube or their web site or send it to the press?  How stupid do you have to be to go to all the trouble to PRETEND your news is important enough to have a press conference?  What kind of confidence should we put in this agency when they don’t take us seriously enough to just be straightforward about something as simple as disseminating information?  To me it proves the point I made earlier: their goal was to use our California disaster to vindicate themselves of the Katrina disaster.  It didn’t work.

San Diego: It takes taxpayers to fund a fire department
I’m not sure how much of the sound and fury about resources hit the national airwaves, but there were some very angry people in San Diego and Orange County.  Up in Ventura County, not so much, possibly because the conditions were different here and air support was used from dawn Sunday until the fires were fully contained, particularly in Malibu.  It could also be this:  We fund our fire departments fully and make sure they have the equipment to fight wildfires, which is not so much the case down in the San Diego area.  Joel Sax has a great post up about what happens when taxpayers make firefighting a priority.  It is unfathomable to me that after 2003 San Diego wouldn’t approve whatever tax was necessary to beef up firefighting resources.

The backstory:
The El Toro Marine Base is adjacent to the city of San Diego and in past times, the National Guard and military resources were easily available to assist with firefighting when needed.  That’s not the case now (and wasn’t in 2003).  LA Times columnist Steve Lopez responds to a comment on RedState.com that firm Republican leadership made the difference in San Diego (at least with respect to the government response), calling New Orleans “a city on the dole.”:

Republicans are better at evacuations than Democrats. This seems to be particularly true when the Republicans in question can flee down the highway in Yukons while Democrats wait for buses trapped under water.

“We’ve evacuated more people than were evacuated in Katrina,” San Diego County Sheriff Bill Kolender said Wednesday.

Not only was that ridiculously untrue, but one might argue the evacuations in the San Diego area were made necessary by a lack of firefighting personnel and equipment in a region that shuns taxes and happily sticks outside agencies with the tab when the bill comes due.

Talk about being on the dole.

I’m not sure I’m willing to go so far as to call San Diego a ‘city on the dole’ (and I don’t think of New Orleans that way either, BTW), but at the same time, opting to cheap out on firefighting resources when so many of the residents live in fire country and there has been such rapid development seems…well…selfish.  Selfish on the part of the city leadership, who should have INSISTED upon it after the near-misses and direct hits of 2003.

Adding insult to injury:
During President Bush’s photo op in San Diego yesterday, he just couldn’t resist making the comparison to Katrina. Only this time, he laid the blame at the doorstep of Kathleen Blanco, Louisiana’s governor by taking just a moment to say this about The Governator:

Bush returned the praise for his fellow Republican. “It makes a significant difference when you have somebody in the statehouse willing to take the lead,” he said.

There’s only one problem: Bush is suffering from head-up-the-ass syndrome once again, because as I and many others pointed out over two years ago, Blanco saw what was coming and requested assistance one full day ahead of Katrina, predicting that a storm of that magnitude would cause the levees to fail and result in a major disaster.  I am rarely a sage or clairvoyant in political matters, but Bush is so obvious in his grandstanding that even I could predict his response.  Here’s what I wrote in 2005:

I admit to the thought that racism and indifference to poverty had something to do with the slow Washington wake-up. I wonder — would the response have been different if Beverly Hills had been wiped out, Century City turned into a putrid parking lot for every bacteria on the planet and the LA Coliseum opened to refugees?

So, it was the Qualcomm stadium and not the LA Coliseum, Malibu and not Beverly Hills,  but you see…the response was predictable, just as his backhanded slap at Blanco was.  That remark was nothing more than a petty, chickenshit partisan smackdown, and proves my previous point about The Governator’s ability to gain an audience where Blanco could not.

Californians, corporations and charities act with compassion.
Donna at SoCal Mom has a nice roundup of resources and help available from private and corporate donors to help fire victims.  A special shoutout to goes fellow Julie Group member Randy Abrams of ESET, too.  ESET has been active in the area helping and is warning victims not to get burned twice by charity scammers. Read it and pass it on to anyone you know who has been affected by the fires.

On whether global warming is a factor:
I’m not smart enough to know as a fact one way or the other.  However, this weather and the ensuing fires were not an anomaly, nor were they unexpected.  In fact, the reason they are burning as hot and wild as they are is because these areas have not seen major wildfires in the past 20+ years.  In my years of living in Southern California, I have definitely seen bad, bad fire seasons, all the way back to my childhood when my home was surrounded by fire on all sides.  Had my mother not climbed up on the roof with the garden hose to defend the house, it may well have burned.  When you live in a canyon covered in chaparral, fire is always something to be concerned about.  The areas that burned are fire-hazard areas, and the odds were not in the favor of homeowners.  Whether or not the force of the winds were stronger as a result of global warming remains to be seen, but I wouldn’t necessarily jump to any kind of agreement that it was any kind of a factor in this event.  Let the scientists figure it out rather than speculating.

The lighter and better side of disasters:
There were some funny moments and posts out there.  Donna’s question about “how to evacuate a goldfish” made me giggle.  The twitterings (including my own) were very helpful, proving that one of the main reasons to be on Twitter is for times like these.  Shelley Powers’ wildly ironic report of Riots in the Valley, and my internal knee-jerk reaction to it before realizing what she was doing gave me a moment or two of self-deprecating laughter.  The self-congratulation of the blogosphere on the success of Web 2.0 in a disaster (link courtesy of Mathew), as well as their short attention span as PageRank tanked and Leopard pounced upon the scene — even more fun.

Your comments mean more than you know…
Beyond all of these wanderings and far closer to home have been the wonderful messages left here on the blog wishing us safety and clearer air (and times) ahead.  As blase’ as I may appear about this whole thing, I am utterly aware that living in this state means living with the knowledge that everything can be gone tomorrow, and I am so grateful that this time around the worst meant bad air, wheezy breathing, and ash and dust everywhere and yet you all took the time to shout out and send good wishes and prayers.  Thank you for that.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: SoCal, wildfires, Katrina, New Orleans, Bush, global warming, twitter, web2.0, fires