[Tig] SoCal Fires - no posts?

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Wed, 24 Oct 2007, Christopher Noellert wrote:
>
> I think it will be interesting to see the federal reaction in to the
> fires as opposed to the lack there of in New Orleans with Katrina...
> For some reason I think it will be a little quicker and a tad more
> concise...

The principle failure in New Orleans was not the federal government. 
In any emergency situation, the local government is responsible.  The 
federal government is only capable of providing long term assistance. 
It is clear that the government in New Orleans, and in fact all of 
Lousiana was severely disfunctional.  If people continue to foolishly 
believe that the federal government is somehow responsible for 
immediate disaster recovery, then the local framework required for 
disaster recovery will not even exist.

Anyone who has lived in California and been through very many fires 
knows the finely honed and well tuned nature of its fire fighting and 
disaster recovery force.  I was there on the week of the huge Cedar 
fire and witnessed firsthand the virtual army which is engaged to 
re-establish vital services.  Helicopers are everywhere dropping new 
power poles in fresh-drilled holes.  Cell towers are replaced.

The evacuations which occured in California are huge and remarkably 
well handled as compared with Lousiana.  There is no shortage of 
volunteers, and it is clear that well thought out plans were followed.

I see that the San Diego fires finally have national attention.  For 
some reason it took several days before it was worth more than a 
verbal mention.  Malibu got all the attention since the stars live 
there.  While the fire has been going on, I found this blog to be the 
best source of information regarding San Diego:

   http://sosdfireblog.blogspot.com/

As an interesting story, my mom went for a walk in Poway a night ago 
(as she always does) and tripped over something on the sidewalk in the 
dark.  It turned out that what she tripped over was a firefighter 
sleeping on the ground. He did not even wake up. There was a solid row 
of tens of firefighters sleeping on the ground, entirely dead to the 
world.

Bob
======================================
Bob Friesenhahn
bfriesen at simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/