October 24, 2007

Southern California besieged by wildfires.
posted by HawthorneWingo 16 years ago
  • Damn it, "besieged." Any chance you could fix, tracicle?
  • Scary stuff. Hope all the SoCal monkeys are ok.
  • Scary stuff, indeed. But beautiful, in its way as well. Hope eveyone is OK.
  • Horrific. As of yesterday, only one death had been reported though, which is incredible.
  • It's up to 5 now, though 4 are indirect. 2 are patients who died being evacuated from medical centers, 1 woman hit her head leaving a restaurant (although she was an evacuee, I'm not sure that can be attributable, no matter what the papers say), and one was found dead in a hotel room after evacuating. (Actually, the first one was a fleeing man in a traffic accident , so is that really a death from the fires? Not sure.) 2 firefighters are in burn units in critical condition as well.
  • And yes, monkeys of that region, in spite of the fact that we think you're all too pretty, and we're jealous of your many fabulous meetups, please be safe and check in!
  • Hope all of you Cali monkeys are safe and dealing with the situation as best as you can.
  • Don't miss the slideshow link on the LA Times page. I was in Southern California during the 1993 fires. Utterly surreal to be out driving at night, with these glowing hillsides all around you. There's the Malibu fire over there. And that's the Pasadena fire over there... Fire is best observed from afar, that's for damn sure. One of the media moments that disgusts me more than all others comes from that time and place, in local TV reporting about the Laguna fires, specifically about some homes destroyed by the fire. This, after discussion of the destruction by fire of low-income apartments in another report. "What makes this story particularly tragic is that they were all multimillion-dollar homes."
  • Hicinbaby and company evacuated briefly to the sea on Monday night, but we're back home now. As far as I know, I'm the only San Diego-area monkey extant. I'm not in regular communication with the LA monkeys, but I think most of them are urban hipsters and the city centers are safe. Things here in SD County are rather a mess, as your usual news sources are telling you. For some reason, they've been drastically under-reporting the level of destruction. More firefighting resources are arriving, and the winds seem to be dying down, but it isn't over yet. On preview: no, San Diego is not on fire. That's exactly the sort of over-the-top bullshit headlines we don't need. Parts of San Diego county are on fire. It's mostly bedroom communities, rural, and semi-rural areas that are burned and/or threatened. San Diego city itself, most of the tourist areas, and the seaside communities are just fine. The other major city centers like La Jolla, El Cajon, La Mesa (where I live) and most urban areas are safe. I'll try and post some more later. Right now I gotta go out and go for a walk and get some lunch-- my stress level is through the roof.
  • Keep safe, hicinbaby.
  • Yes.
  • Yes, we urban L.A. monkeys are not in harm's way. The only effects that we feel, at least near the beach, are surreal orange skies that look like an ugly perpetual pre-sunset and an unbearable heat that I can only deem as being exacerbated by the greenhouse effect caused by all the smoke. Also dry eyes and some slightly labored breathing. My heart goes out to all those who have been more directly affected. I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around 1 million people being evacuated. And people living at the local football (American) stadium in San Diego. It recalls images of the post-Katrina event at their local stadium. But with more white people and a lot drier. Our local news stations have been broadcasting round the clock on just the fires. Usually I abhor such single-minded sensationalism, but this time it feels warranted.
  • "one was found dead in a hotel room after evacuating." This sentence was also observed in the brandy enema thread. Never mind me.
  • I hear that FEMA is doing OK this time? Earnest wishes that everyone who needs it is getting help.
  • > I hear that FEMA is doing OK this time? Earnest > wishes that everyone who needs it is getting help. As far as I know (and I was over at the main evac center at Qualcomm Stadium this morning) FEMA hasn't shown up yet, but we locals are doing what needs doing right now. Perhaps I'm being overly cynical, but it makes a big difference that the affected population here is mostly white, wealthy, and politically active. This won't be allowed to turn into another government-run fuckup like New Orleans. I have a rant coming about how little the powers-that-be have learned about fires in the last four years, but I'm not ready to let it out yet.
  • Glad you're doing okay, hicinbaby. Keep us updated when you have the chance.
  • Anyone in the LA area in the direct path of current or potential future fires will live in the canyons and on the hillsides. My zip code is not so hip or expensive as to be directly affected. A friend mentioned yesterday that it would be ironic if we got an earthquake now. Even so, the air is thick and hot and little ashes are everywhere. As mentioned before the light is a weird orange in the middle of the day. Sort of reminds me of the days of the Rodney King riots, yet somehow comfortingly Halloween-y. As look out my apartment window I can't help think of the end of the world.
  • My thought's are with you and your family, hincinbaby. Take care. FEMA hasn't shown up yet Paper's here are saying what a good job they're doing already. Such BULLSHIT!!
  • Bluehorse, that's "a good job" in comparison to the response to Katrina. And I don't doubt that Southern California will get much better FEMA service than did New Orleans. After all, those affected are richer, whiter and vote more often than the denizens of the Big Easy.
  • hincinbaby I'm glad to hear you're alright. I think perhaps the meaning behind reports that FEMA is doing a good job is because they are not there...
  • Add me to the list of persons glad your ok, hicinbaby. Thanks for checking in and keeping us posted. Maybe FEMA's good job in comparison is that they actually realize there's a problem this time?
  • A friend from Orange County mentioned last week that they have had half an inch of rain, so far this year.
  • "Orange" County. Huh.
  • Thanks for all your good wishes. But I hear that the Shrub is coming tomorrow for a look-see. Isn't one disaster enough?!? Please pray for us.
  • Counterintuitively, fire-suppression measures lead to larger, more catastrophic fires. Without forest fires going through periodically, there's a buildup of fuel. As well, fire-suppression has thrown off the natural forest cycles between grassland and older stands, leading to a loss of habitat for those grassland or light-cover species. The current theory is to do prescribed burns, to clear out the fuel and speed up the return of nutrients to the soil, as well as preserve habitat. As I understand. IANATreeD. And I love saying "prescribed burn". Please continue.
  • FEMA sure is doing a great job. This is from this morning's AP feed:
    WASHINGTON – One way to get decent coverage in this rough-and-tumble city is to arrange to have your own employees interrogate you at your news conference. That would seem to be the strategy of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, much maligned for its sluggish response to Hurricane Katrina over two years ago. FEMA scheduled an early afternoon news briefing on only 15 minutes notice to reporters here Tuesday to talk about its handling of assistance to victims of wildfires that were ravaging much of Southern California. But because there was so little advance notice for the event held by Vice Adm. Harvey E. Johnson, the deputy FEMA administrator, the agency made available an 800 number so reporters could call in. And many did. But at the news conference itself, some FEMA's agency employees played the role of reporter, asking questions of Johnson, The Washington Post reported in Friday's editions. Questions were described as soft and gratuitous. “I'm very happy with FEMA's response,” Johnson said in reply to one query from a person the Post said was an agency employee, not an independent journalist. Asked about this, Mike Widomski, FEMA's deputy director of public affairs, said, “We had been getting mobbed with phone calls from reporters, and this was thrown together at the last minute.”
    And yes, they're here in San Diego now too. A bunch of them have commandeered the parking lot of the nursing home next to my lab for their staging area.
  • "Staging" being the operative word?
  • that's "a good job" in comparison to the response to Katrina That's a good job in comparison to the 'assistance' given to ... Iraq.
  • Bush is such an endearing incompetent. One just wants to hug the big lug.
  • One out of 300,000,000. Sounds about right.
  • So far I've heard one passing comment about Mexico. What are things like south of the border?
  • You're kidding, right? This is America, dammit! We don't care what happens to Mexico, as long as all those darned Mexicans stay on their side of the line!
  • And in case anyone didn't catch my sarcasm, I was being sarcastic.
  • Hey, my Sarcasm Detector is on the fritz. Did anybody catch any sarcasm here lately?
  • NooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooo...
  • No problems in Mexico, Tracicle. Because of the winds, the Harris fire (the southern one) moved east and north, not south. Now that the winds have changed, it's burning back to the east but still not south. The Tecate border crossing was closed all week but will reopen tomorrow morning. And unlike we foolish Americans, the Mexicans haven't built bedroom communities in the eastern desert.
  • > "Staging" being the operative word? Damned if I know exactly what they're doing, but there sure are a lot of them. They're busy little bees, at least from nine to five. They're coming and going constantly. They moved in a couple of trailers as temporary offices. Supposedly they're going to go away as soon as their facilities in the downtown federal building are properly equipped. They were apparently planning to move in a bunch of the infamous FEMA trailers as temporary housing for the folks whose houses burned. Turns out nobody wants them. Pretty much all anyone wants is money and help smoothing the way through the bureaucracy.... like they'd be any good at that. The most annoying thing? Our employees are used to parking in the nursing home parking lot at night, and the feds have stopped that. Some of our folks might be terra-ists, you know. So they're pissing people off mightily and they haven't even started doing their actual work yet.
  • Ah, but wait, hicinbaby, just wait. FEMA will have you opening a terrierest cell in a shopping mall near you within a week!
  • What are things like south of the border? If you're a Mexican without papers, things aren't so good north of the border right now.
  • I ran into my next door neighbor at the grocery store today, and the conversation ran to weather changes of the last few years. He claimed to have heard a news report a few years ago that claimed that an earthquake had changed the polar angle of the earth, and that was why stuff seemed to be getting so drastic. He is one of those folks who thinks that income tax is "illegal" and thinks the right wing commentators are "right on", even though he thinks he adheres to to a strict middle of the road orientation. But, was there a news story? It makes some sense that our relation to the sun would affect our weather. I googled, but came up with nothing that I would trust. My tendency is to dismiss it as screed from global warming deniers, but do any of you remember such a claim?
  • I seem to remember hearing somewhere that the earthquake which caused the Asian tsunami actually caused a bobble in in the Earth's rotation, but I never heard it attributed to any atmospheric phenomena.
  • As far as I know, we've never before had this sort of fire season in Californa, especially this early in the year. Or, maybe, just never. And, just maybe, the agencies should have increased resources, but if it turned out to be a mild season, I'm sure we'd all be complaining about wasted tax dellars. The Katrina disaster might have been ameliorated somewhat if the levees had been bulked up years ago, but, again, what's the best way to plan for events that have been rare in the past? How do you keep the Mississipi river from flooding thousands of acres of farm land and towns and cities in its path? You might think that we shouldn't build in the areas that could be in danger, but how many of us live in areas which could be threatened, but haven't been hit in generations? And, where should we move to escape dire straits, just in case? I'm not sure there's anywhere, at least in the US, that doesn't have a threat of some sort of disaster lurking beyond our ability to predict it with certainty. It's a crapshoot, folks. I've lived through 3 major earthquakes, but this is my first experience with a major drought. I'm surrounded by farm land, which will be irrigated till hell turns chilly(the farmers have stashes of water in the aquifer), but we're approaching water rationing in my little town. Maybe the City Council should have foreseen that this would happen, but they're just citizens who got elected to part-time, second jobs and don't have the experience needed to run even a a less complicated business. If we were threatened by fires, they would certainly be unprepared. A major disaster would put the residents pretty much on their own. And, maybe that's the way it should be since the funding for better prepared represebtitives ain't gonna be available.
  • And, now we've had smoke from the fires up north drifting down for 3 days. Air qualilty is the worst for years, and we have the worst air quality in the nation. The hippie in me thinks that Mother Nature is really pissed off at us, based on all the disasters that happened this year around the world. I'm not saying that our situation is the equivalent of the events in Burma, China, and the places in my county which touch the Mississipie River, or the eastern coast hurricanes which have been plagues for years. But I spent some of yesterday unable to catch a breath, so I'm taking it personally.