Fires in California
My prayers are with all the people in southern California as they deal with the horrible fires in their area. For the third day, fires are destroying homes and displacing people. More people have been forced out their homes than from the hurricane that hit in New Orleans.
Having learned from the New Orleans experience, the department of homeland security is handling the situation somewhat better than they did when hurricane Katrina hit. Still, it must be a horrible experience for all who are enduring this horrible situation.
I think more than homeland security “handling the situation” better, is the fact that they aren’t dealing with as corrupt and incompetent state and local authorities.
In New Orleans they refused to issue a mandatory evacuation (despite Bush repeatedly asking them to). They had hundreds of buses available for evacuation, and that was even part of their written plan (they chose not to). They had almost a week to get out of town (back when the storm was actually strong out in the Gulf).
Then, the EXTREMELY weakened storm struck Mississippi as only a category 3, and New Orleans only experience between category 1 or 2 conditions. The levees were supposed to be able to handle the storm surge generated by a category 3, but we know now there were design and/or construction issues. Because of this, the storm surge that never even came close to “overtopping” the levees (which was the concern at the time, even when the storm was stronger out in the Gulf). So the storm surge was weak, but the levees broke when they shouldn’t have.
Then came the chaos and looting from a bunch of lowlifes who should have never been still in the city and who are a product of the (already) most corrupt and out of control big city in the country.
Then came the race baiting from every “black leader” and Democrat in the country. Then came Democrat LA Governor Blanco attacking Bush for not sending help, while SHE was the one blocking the Red Cross from delivering supplies to the Superdome (they were right there waiting on the outskirts of town). Bush was also attacked for not getting on the ground himself (when the previous year they’d attacked him for helping out in cleanup efforts in Florida for “just coming for a photo op”, and they just did that to him again when he went to SoCal)
You had lies about “rapes” and “bodies piling up” in the Superdome, crying lunatic reporters, black leaders saying Bush blew up the levees on purpose, Kanye West saying “George Bush doesn’t care about black people”…. Meanwhile, a disproportionate amount of WHITES died in New Orleans. (meaning, white deaths represented a much higher percentage of total deaths, compared to the percentage of the population that they made up)
It also didn’t help that Louisiana’s emergency preparedness team was all busy…. awaiting trial for some $50+ million in missing federal funds.
etc. etc. etc.
In California, you had people who got virtually no warning… Many had to just wake up and flee. There weren’t days of watching a satellite image twirling off the coast it was just “fire, grab the pets and let’s go!”
The difference? competent local and state leadership.
Here’s the big question I have though today… You can do a quick Yahoo! or Google news search for ‘california’ and ‘refugees’, and see that the mainstream media has repeatedly called people seeking refuge at the Qualcomm stadium as “refugees”… But when the media did this in New Orleans, Jesse Jackson and pals screamed “that’s a racist word!”, and the media spent a week debating it. Shameful.
It was a very scary time and I’m so glad that there was so much kindness and fortitude during such a terrible tragedy.
I took some pictures of the blaze near my home, looking back on them reminds me how much shock I was in at the time:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeradkaliher/1715335420/