I was getting dressed this AM and heard a CNN report on the wonderful logistical planning that went into handling the people in San Diego displaced from their homes as fires rage there. National Guard troops were in place, food, water and even yoga classes awaited Californians who needed to de-stress from the trauma of having to bunk down in Qualcomm Stadium.
About 12,000 people displaced by the wildfires sought shelter Tuesday at Qualcomm Stadium, where volunteers were on hand to provide food and other services. The evacuation operation was going smoothly Tuesday afternoon, and National Guard troops sent to maintain order were described as polite and helpful.The first thing that came to mind of course, is what happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, when it took five days to get water to people in distress, despite ample time to prepare before the disaster struck as Katrina made its way to the Gulf coast.AT&T provided Internet access to the evacuees and charged their cell phones for free. Volunteers offered massage therapy, yoga, kosher food and art projects for kids.
"There was a call for artists last night," said Brian Patterson, who manages community programs at the San Diego Museum of Art. "And I thought, 'this is what I do, anyway,' so I came down here," he said.
Evacuees also had access to information on insurance and got medical help. They were given snacks and drinks and necessities such as baby wipes, tooth brushes, toothpaste and hand sanitizers.
Why do you think that is? dnA had something to say, and it's after the jump.
From Too Sense:
Maybe conditions in the Superdome would have been better if the evacuees had massage therapists to help them cope with the stress of being abandoned and left to die for five days; but I'm inclined to think that maybe food, water, and shelter would have been enough.You can also add to that plenty of blame for Mayor Ray Nagin and Governor Kathleen Blanco — they had no clear plan and were in over their heads in dealing with the Bush White House and the political games; in fact Nagin had developed a DVD to pass out in the churches of the city to tell poor residents that they were on their own when The Big One hit. It was all a perfect storm of incompetence, classism, racism and politics that was the shame of a nation.Had New Orleans been a mostly white city, they would have gotten all that and more.
There are many factors at work here, the fact that the governor of California is a Republican and the Bush Administration would like to keep it that way, the fact that the evacuees here are financially better off than those in Hurricane Katrina, and the fact that the evacuees are not overwhelmingly black. But it really comes down to the same thing, which is that in America how the government treats you hinges entirely on your race, class, and assumed political affiliation.
And the difference in the situations was not lost on the Associated Press either:
Like Hurricane Katrina evacuees two years earlier in New Orleans, thousands of people rousted by natural disaster fled to the NFL stadium here, waiting out the calamity and worrying about their homes.I anticipate that it will not be long before the Town Hall crowd suggests that the difference is due to the savage negroes.The similarities ended there, as an almost festive atmosphere reigned at Qualcomm Stadium.
…The New Orleans evacuees had dragged themselves through floodwaters to get to the Louisiana Superdome in 2005, and once there endured horrific conditions without food, sanitation or law enforcement. But these evacuees drove to the expansive parking lots in the San Diego suburbs. The worst that most endured in their exodus was heavy traffic and smoky haze.
Wow…that distinction is so stark, even the AP picked up on it.
It just disgusts me all over again about Katrina. And that so many people will read that and not connect the dots… Sorry, pessimistic morning…
I’m thinking that sitting through a smoky traffic jam is preferable to wading miles to “safety” through storm waters. But that’s just me.
Seems that the lights are on and the sewers are working out West, too.
Those fires obviously are a bitch, but give those folks 95 degrees, 95 percent humidity, no electricity or plumbing and a couiple of feet of contaminated water, and nobody would be talking about Yoga lessons after a couple of days.
But rather than see the stark, blatant difference in how FEMA/WH responded to the folks affected by Katrina, bushco will instead say that they “learned” from that experience, as a means of justifying their responses to the SoCal fires. They will deny the racism card to the end.
Even my 12 year old laughed her ass off about gourmet food and massage tables- asked if she could go “help” for awhile.
Those fires obviously are a bitch, but give those folks 95 degrees, 95 percent humidity, no electricity or plumbing and a couiple of feet of contaminated water, and nobody would be talking about Yoga lessons after a couple of days.
Yes we would. The difference has absolutely nothing to do with Federal or “Bush” resources; these are not US Government-dispatched Yoga Instructors, any more than the food donations from local businesses (so much that some has had to be turned away) were at BushithlerCo’s request, either.
Really the major difference, which the media outlets are failing to mention, is the speed in which the two disasters hit. Katrina gave little warning, and when the levees broke the flooding was immediate, plus there were no ‘floodfighters’ to slow down the progress of the devastation. These wildfires, on the other hand, while very destructive, are fairly slow moving. Plus the firefighters have been working to slow it down. Of course it’s more orderly and organized, the time factor alone should account for that.
I anticipate that it will not be long before the Town Hall crowd suggests that the difference is due to the savage negroes.
I wouldn’t take that bet. The only question is who will say it first–Clown Hall columnist? Righty bloggers? Jonah Goldberg?
Some of the difference is that California tends to have a more functional government bureaucracy on all levels than Louisiana. Long before Katrina, the Louisiana state government would do stuff like build half a bridge rather than spend state money to finish it.
West coast governments are more geared to deliver services to start with, so they are better organized when it comes to emergencies than states in the South or Northeast. Look at how Georgia has failed to act in the face of a looming water crisis despite dire warnings during the last year.
In short, New Orleans being in Louisiana, with it’s very disfunctional government that is even more disfunctional for blacks than whites (but pretty incompetent and hamstrung by a history of corruption, poor legal structures, and the Napoleanic Code all around) led to the conditions in New Orleans. It is a messy situation that is far more complex than race - particularly when one notes how heavily hispanic the evacuated areas of San Diego are.
One final note: SanDiego is a bedroom community for the navy and the US military. That has something to do with the response as well.
First, I think that Louise is on to something, though not in the way she intended. It is pretty dang likely that part of the reason the response was so organized was that FEMA had learned from Katrina.
Second, the article notes the numerous volunteers that made stadium life easier. This did not happen during Katrina, at least not initially, because there the entire city was in peril and there was no one who could volunteer. San Diego itself is not facing total destruction, so it is not surprising that the evacuation is going much more smoothly.
At this point I almost don’t care what the differing reasons are for the responses. I live in New Orleans and it all just makes me cry.
Also, Brian Williams saying that this is the greatest mass movement of Americans since WW2?? More people evacuated for Rita than Katrina, and that was like 3 million or so. The one-upping of disasters for cheap media points… well add that to the list of frustrating things about living here.
Previous posters have noted how the situations are not at all the same. Slow moving disaster, evacuation center removed from the disaster, functioning government with officials not all having to worry about their own homes/families, a culture of do for yourself AND help your neighbors (even if you don’t now them) when disaster hits, a city full of people who can volunteer and donate because they are not also threatened….
Race is a piece, no doubt, but a very small one.
I wouldn’t say that race is a small piece - part of the reason that Louisiana government drowned in a bathtub with New Orleans was directly related to the racial politics of “just screw the n—–s!” - the deliberate withdrawl of tax money from areas according to race.
I would argue that it was a need to de-stress from possibly losing one’s home to fire, rather than having to bunk down in Qualcomm Stadium.
That said, I disagree vehemently with this:
Race is not a “small” piece of anything in this country. Racism and sexism are the two main cogs driving our entire society. To suggest otherwise is to be willfully blind.
But, whatever makes you feel better, right?
Maybe the proponents of the “volunteers are the difference” thesis could explain how volunteers could have gotten to the Superdome in NOLA when the city was underwater. Last I checked, the fires hadn’t set the pavements of the SoCal freeways ablaze.
Personally, I translate the “volunteers” thesis into “Negroes are a child-like race who need others to take care of them,” but maybe that’s just me.
I don’t begrudge SoCal ANY of the help it’s gotten, but all citizens should be treated equally, and that’s so clearly not happening.
The differential between Republican reaction to Katrina and Republican reaction to the fires is down to racism, pure and simple, with an admixture of taking care of the Republicans first.
If you think that’s not true, then I ask you to wait for the Republican party apparat and the shouting heads to start saying “It’s not worth it to rebuild,” like they did for New Orleans. I think you’ll be waiting a very long time.
As for volunteers, there were plenty willing to assist in New Orleans, but FEMA and other officials would not allow them to get into New Orleans.
The military wouldn’t even consider dropping in water and food to the Dome and Convention Center because there were “rumors” of snipers taking shots at the helicopters.
Yeh, that’s the SAME military that constantly flies all over Iraq and Afghanistan with tens of thousands of enemies shooting at them with AK-47s and RPGs, not to mention IEDs.
In the days following Katrina, the United States military REFUSED to drop food and water to AMERICAN CITIZENS in an American city because they heard somebody “might” be taking pot shots at the copters.
Some of us here in Louisiana appreciate the brave souls in the Coast Guard helicopters, who refused to quit saving our citizens.
I’m not far from where some of the other fires are (east of LA and north of San Diego), so were getting plenty of smoky/nasty air, and I know/work-with a bunch of people who’ve had to evacuate. The guy who sits next to me at work just moved from the mountains a few months ago, and the house he was in is probably gone. Luck?
It was really disturbing to see how relatively smoothly the evacuations have gone, compared to NOLA. Not that it was a bad thing, but the NOLA evacuations should have been at least as smooth. This is more like the America I grew up in.
I am more convinced than ever that no matter how incompetent the Bushites are, virtually everything that has “gone wrong” on their watch has been intentional.
A minority-dominated Democratic-stronghold city in the South is threatened? Fuck ‘em.
“Nice” Republican-leaning suburbs and military towns in Southern California, where there is a Republican governor and a lot of Republican Representatives? Move heaven and earth, just like whenever something happens to Florida.
Disgraceful…
When the inevitable books come out eviscerating the Cheney/Bush Administration and exposing the festering sores of current American “government” for the world to see, when the next several generations of historians earn their degrees by analyzing in excruciating detail all the flaws of the evil men who’ve dominated government in this country for the last two decades, when American mothers use the specter of The Cheneyman as a threat to exact good behavior from their children, I hope the lessons of these sickening years will be burned so deeply into the tissues of every American’s mind, we will never again allow ourselves to be ripped-off and dumped naked in the desert by a band of traveling political flim-flam men who come along talking about “freedom”, “democracy”, and “Global War On Terrorism”, “9/11″, etc…
I’m in So Cal (near Los Angeles with our different set of fires) and, yes, the idiot local news was marveling at how different Qualcomm stadium was. There was absolutely an edge of, “See how much better we are here in California?”
There’s definitely a difference in the local and state government responses. We have so many disasters, and so many different kinds, that they pretty much have to be prepared at all times or the entire state would go to hell.
Expect to see a few ‘wingers lose their shit, though — at least half of the faces on TV were clearly Latino, so there’s going to be a backlash of OMG why were we giving disaster relief to ILLEGALS!!11!!1
Oh, and given that this is California, the yoga classes are probably being offered by the refugees themselves — we’ve got a lot of yoga instructors out here, at least some of them were probably evacuated, and what else are you going to do with your time when you’re sitting around the stadium?
In addition to the comments above about differences between the disasters, I was led to believe (by people from the area in interviews on CNN) that this isn’t the first time some of these families have had to evacuate. I haven’t done the research on this, btu a few of them mentioned it being a bit better handled than their 2003 evacuation.
So while there’s likely a learning curve thing going on here, it’s quite possible that it’s a local “doing things better this time around” instead of a “isn’t the USgov’t so great, we’ve sorted out all our FEMA problems now” learning curve.
I have friends who fight fires in BC professionally and they tell me of families who live in common fire zones and who know what precautions to take, build with brick and stone to help “fire proof” and keep coming back and re-building. They have evacuation down to an art when they know there’s a threat. I wonder if it could be the same on a smaller scale here.
I think that race and politics play a definite role here, and I am not at *all* happy with the clear difference in response between Katrina and the fires.
There are a few practical differences also in play, though, as has been pointed out — it’s easier for people to get food and other assistance through streets that are crowded with stop-and-go traffic but definitely not flooded; there are local people free to volunteer without worrying about evacuating their own homes (yet); California municipalities usually have fairly active disaster planning in place due to the risk of earthquakes (talk about having little lead time — !).
Does that excuse the magnitude of the difference? Not even close. But if we don’t take those factors into account, people who want to excuse the utter incompetence of our response to Katrina will use them in arguing against us.
Another difference: Unlike in New Orleans, those National Guard troops aren’t pointing their guns at the evacuees.
Probably nobody from Blackwater there, either.
That anybody is making these comparisons at all shows just how screwed up our country is. The differences in the situation enormously outweigh the similarities.
Uncular1, I disagree with you on one point. The amount of neglect and disrepair to the levees that happened pre-Katrina takes years if not decades. There was nothing sudden about them breaking down.
Two other brief comments:
LA is a media hub, numerous west coast news bureaus and networks are based there. They might be expected to play up the best spin they could put on a disaster, and do a better job than the media, most of which was from out-of-town, did especially with the TV news coverage of the Katrina disaster.
The fires also coincided with a major political conference, “Conference on Women”, hosted by Maria Shriver, wife of California Govenor Schwartzenegger, which had the wives of the various Presidential canididates, international political figures, entertainers, etc. With that event not having been cancelled and with the necessary media coverage of it, one might expect the media to further spin disaster coverage to play up what positive news they could of how California is accomodating refugees and handling the disaster in general.
And finally, unlike the Katrina refugees left behind in New Orleans and at the Superdome, LA residents have cars. It’s considered a necessity in LA, from what I’ve heard. That obviously helped evacuees, compared to the ones in New Orleans who seemed to not cars and not have anyone who particularly cared enough to come and get them.
Yes, many of the people left behind or who weren’t helped enough in NO were black, but if I recall correctly from disaster coverage, they were also old or handicapped. The vast majority of the city did evacuate, black and white, it was mostly black, and the old, handicapped, and in some cases the sick who remained. Who does that reflect most poorly on — the government for not doing more to help the people, the advocacy groups for the respective constituencies who maybe didn’t do enough in advance to educate or prepare to evacuate at least the people who they claim to be advocates for, or on all of us, for not demanding that the government and advocacy groups do more to prepare for disasters like these?
The events at Qualcomm stadium does seem a disturbing to me, for all of the reasons posters above have mentioned, plus one other. Did anyone get the feeling from the coverage that a lot of business were donating for the promotional exposure, likje they wanted credit in the media, or maybe to promote themselves onsite? I do not want to name businesses because it may not be a correct impression, but that’s how it seemed to me. I suppose they do deserve some credit and maybe a tax deduction, but especially given the heavy and positive media coverage I thought it might be likely that some businesses were trying to take advantage of what coverage they could get — and maybe all the more deserve, perhaps, if their businesses were damaged or destroyed by the fires.
Yes, there are differences in the situations. However, rather than the Superdome, we might compare it to the Astrodome being used as a post-Katrina evacuation center.
Houston was not flooded. Houston officials weren’t worrying about their homes. (Until Rita, of course.) Yet instead of massage therapists and TVs, we had folks who were trying to set up a low power FM station delayed for no apparent reason.
Why the vast difference there? (Well, Barbara Bush did say that she thought things were working out for the evacuees. Maybe she was doing the yoga classes.)
“The differences in the situation enormously outweigh the similarities.”
One was a hurricane and flooding and the other involved fire - therefore it’s impossible to compare them, paul?
Personally, I think every single tragic incident - flood, tornado, hurricane, fire, earthquake, etc. - and our response to it, needs to be examined throughly so we learn where the problems were, learn where we did things right or wrong, etc.
There will never be a time with no disasters. Given that, it seems obvious to me that we need to learn to handle disasters of all kinds as smoothly and efficiently as possible - Democrat or Republican, Black or white, rich or poor, north or south, east or west.
Otherwise we’ll continue to live in a “libertarian paradise” of death and destruction made worse by government, not better…
Yes, there are differences in the situations. However, rather than the Superdome, we might compare it to the Astrodome being used as a post-Katrina evacuation center.
Houston was not flooded. Houston officials weren’t worrying about their homes. (Until Rita, of course.) Yet instead of massage therapists and TVs, we had folks who were trying to set up a low power FM station delayed for no apparent reason.
Why the vast difference there? (Well, Barbara Bush did say that she thought things were working out for the evacuees. Maybe she was doing the yoga classes.)
The differences in the situation enormously outweigh the similarities.
This point needs to be hammered home. We can’t forget that NOLA wasn’t just evacuated — it was abandoned. Everyone in the metro area was told to get out, and the people left behind were generally the people who literally couldn’t leave. In San Diego, parts of the metro area are being devastated, and horribly so. But other parts are just dealing with some smoke in the air and are otherwise fine, and in no real danger. So you have a ton of San Diegans who are fine, have their cars, electricity, access to their food — of course they’re helping out. Had only half of NOLA been threatened, I’m sure the other half would have been able to drive over to the Superdome and donate time and materiel as well.
I don’t know that California hasn’t benefited from the anger shown over the Katrina meltdown — the fact that Americans actually were angry when the Bush administration left thousands of people to drown had to be disconcerting, and might even have penetrated someone’s skull, even if that skull was Arnold Schwarzenegger’s. But there’s no doubt that the initial lackadaisical response in NOLA had a lot to do with skin color and socioeconomic class.
The situation in New Orleans was certainly horrific, and it still has not completely recovered. But so many people forget that it was us in Southern Mississippi who caught the brunt of the storm’s force. The population is not as dense here, and there is not such a large African-American population, but the situation here was still not very good. I heard horror studies from my friends on the MS Gulf Coast about dying loved ones, wrecked buildings, etc. And judging from recent trips to the coast, during which I saw people still living in tents in some of the harder-hit areas, things are still not okay.
I said all that to say this. Race was certainly a major factor in the NOLA Katrina snafu. But the biggest factors for the general lack of caring for the whole area, I think, were 1) general poverty, and 2) the fact that rural and coastal Mississippi and Louisiana were affected. A few morons here have made the whole nation hate and look down upon this general area, and as a result of their ignorance and bigotry, many Americans think we’d all be better off if most of the Southern states washed out into the Gulf. California is much more sexy–as America’s major entertainment provider, we can’t let it be hurt. What does it matter if a few hick towns in Mississippi got wiped off the map?
If there is such a thing as “placeism” or “locationism,” it has certainly come into play in the recent natural disasters in the US. Many of us in MS felt this way about New Orleans at the time–”why is everyone paying so much attention to NO and ignoring our suffering? Because it’s a city, and we are mostly rural people.”
Hopefully some of this makes sense…My thoughts are with those affected by the CA wildfires, and with everyone whose lives are still affected daily by Katrina…
One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just isn’t the same:
Slow moving disaster, evacuation center removed from the disaster, functioning government with officials not all having to worry about their own homes/families, a culture of do for yourself AND help your neighbors (even if you don’t now them) when disaster hits, a city full of people who can volunteer and donate because they are not also threatened….
Bzzt! Time’s up! Yes, it’s the dog-whistle word ‘cutlture’ that triggered my ire.
I have a number of relatives and business associates in San Diego. I visit there at least 4 times a year. And San Diegans are the most self-centered people on the planet. Their newspapers are heavy with ads for cosmetic surgeries of all kinds, because this is an extremely shallow community, in the aggregate. And racist? Don’t get me started. If you’re brown, stick around…because we’ll be checking your papers very carefully.
Far from a culture of helping neighbors, if you listen to the massage therapists you’ll hear them explaining that ‘it just felt right’ to volunteer, which means that if next week it feels wrong they won’t do it regardless of need. Because it’s all about how they feel.
Due to the relative prosperity and whiteness of those evacuees it just feels right, to other privileged white people who are always in danger of the same happening to their own families, to help them.
Damn right that’s culture, but not a part of it to be proud of.
Folks here might want to check out Mike Davis’s Ecology of Fear, written in 1998. Although he focuses on the LA area (and folks should know that LA and SD are not that near one another — maybe 100 miles apart?), his discussion is really on point for this set of wildfires. I haven’t looked much at the book since reading it about 7 or 8 years ago, but Davis basically analyzes our ways of understanding the relationship between nature and the built environment, and looks carefully at the ways that natural disasters, and our notions about them, emerge from race and class structures underlying our society.
Come to think of it, Ecology of Fear wouldn’t be a bad choice for the book club…
Kodiak nailed it above–San Diego had a very similar fire in 2003, which led to embarrassing chaos. Governments are really good at this sort of thing when you give them a do-over.
Another advantage is just structural–California is really big, and has two major urban areas separated by hundreds of miles. This means that California usually has at least one functioning massive urban area during any crisis, which can provide immense reserves of equipment, money, and volunteers to any stricken area.
Granted, that should apply even more strongly to the country as a whole, but the federal government is (as we all know) totally FUBARed for now.
There’s also just the fact that the two disasters are inverted–it’s much easier to evacuate into a functioning urban core than to evacuate outwards from a disaster-stricken one. Downtown San Diego and its inner suburbs are not currently on fire.
This situation should put in stark relief the difference between haves and have nots in this country. This is a difference intimitaly tied up in race. My wife is a teacher is East Oakland. Her school has no white students with about half black and half latino kids. The school is in absolutly dire straitghts. The facilities are falling apart, there are no (0) computers for student use and no internet access. Last week a sewer main broke and raw sewage was literally covering the playground. School was not closed and teachers just had to lead the kids around the mess. The kids can’t go on field trips because their is no money for a bus, and they can’t ask kids on free lunch to bring five dollars to school to pay for it.
Meanwhile, in San Francisco, I have a coworker who is “looking at elementary schools”. He has decided to stick with the local public school because they have great facilities. Those great facilities come from donations ($600k last year) and also just advocacy for the school. Drive around in a black neighborhood. Check out the streets. Are their more potholes? Probably. Is the street dirtier? Probably. The reason being that in middle-upper class white neighborhoods people call and complain and someone listens. Because the people have pull in government. Why couldn’t New Orleans get the attention it needed? Because the government was disfunctional with no will to fix it. The federal government didn’t care.
I don’t know what I am driving at, but I think the fact that people in the hills in San Diego can actually talk to people in goverment if they want to helps. The fact that people in the hills with five cars and a pool probably make pretty good donors helps. And the fact that the people in government know and interact with people affected makes a difference. It all highlights the fact that poor people, and especially poor, black people, are almost completely shut out of the way our government makes decisions.
Pesto, Mike Davis also has a couple articles up at the Radical Urban Theory about the history of wildfires in SoCal. If y’all don’t have time to read the book, just google “Mike Davis california fire” and read his articles on the subject.
This means that California usually has at least one functioning massive urban area during any crisis, which can provide immense reserves of equipment, money, and volunteers to any stricken area.
Unfortunately, we actually have two major sets of fires about 100 miles apart, and the firefighters are getting stretched very thin. Gov. Arnie has requested that the feds recall some of our National Guard troops from Iraq to help out, but I don’t know if that’s happened yet.
It’s reminding me of one of the things that pissed me off most with Katrina: because half the National Guard troops for Louisiana and Mississippi are in Iraq, there was no one to call up to help with the rescue. And they’re still over there.
Oh, and we saw useless asshole Chertoff on the news yesterday touring the Qualcomm center. How long did it take him to get to New Orleans, again? But have fires in wealthy Republican areas like Orange County and San Diego and oh my god we’d better hurry over there!
I’m with a few of the people on here who believe that this isn’t quite as severe as Katrina. Katrina was an unexpected event, hitting a city that was always charmed for its quirks but was horribly maintained and received little respect from the government. The fact that the city is overwhelmingly black did not help the cause either. It probably exacerbated the situation.
But, in San Diego, this is very different. Fires move slowly in comparison to hurricanes and happen regularly in California. The wildfire is Florida’s hurricane. Both areas are ready for them, know how to deal with them, and can get the job done quickly and efficiently. Some are dealt with quickly, and others take a little longer. But, suffice it to say, the city life will return back to normal fairly soon.
The racial component is one that I can’t overlook. But, at least something is being done efficiently in this country. I know that nothing else is.
The difference in the response sickens me.
The simple fact that the national guard drew arms against American citizens in NO is really all you need to know.
That’s compassionate conservatism in action.
Katrina was an unexpected event
By what definition of “unexpected”? It was considered one of the top three most expected extreme disasters likely to happen within a few years when FEMA was a functioning entity.
As for the exact timing, there was about a week lead time and years of understanding that anything over a Cat 3 hurricane would flood the city. Furthermore, there was an evacuation in 2004 that should have served as a learning event, but didn’t.
Are you serious? Comparing Katrina and this?
New Orleans was a poor city, in a poor region, that had been largely abandoned prior to Katrina hitting. In the process, the entire city was brought to its knees, infrastructure was completely destroyed, transportation largely impossible.
Southern California, on the other hand, is a wealthy area. In addition, these fires have only destroyed residential areas in suburban and rural areas. The cities of San Diego and Los Angeles are still fully functioning, without major interruptions to communications or transportation/logistics.
I’m not saying the Katrina response wasn’t horrid, but to say that, had New Orleans been white, it could be just as great as what’s going on in San Diego is a completely dishonest representation of both situations.
California also has the largest economy in the US (No. 8 in the world), and the largest state population in the US. We would do really well economically without the rest of the US, but the opposite is not true.
In the end, however, when the Bush Family Crime Syndicate is faced with a bunch of poor black folks in need, they couldn’t care less.
When a bunch of (mostly) white, (mostly) Republican voting, (relatively) rich folks in a huge state are in danger - they step up to the plate.
Sad, embarrassing, stupid, criminal - a mirror of the current Reichwing mindset…
Native San Diegan who evacuated on Monday here. A couple of things:
1. The Cedar Fire in 2003, which was incredibly devastating, really did give people a better grasp on how to handle a fire-related disaster. It made a lot of individuals re-tune their fire plans and it made local and state governments re-think their tactics. This fire is going to be even worse than the Cedar Fire, but people are far more prepared.
2. Mobility is key. People got the call to evacuate as early as Monday morning, and many people left as soon as they hit voluntary evac, not waiting for voluntary evac. In addition, most people in San Diego have cars, as the public transportation here is for shit. Aside from some people who wanted to remain at their houses for as long as possible or stay in some misguided attempt to save their property, most people had the ability and the warning to get out as soon as possible. In addition, blogs, Twitters, local news sites, and even Facebook have been pretty good at letting people know what roads are closed and what routes to take, so even when there’s traffic, people have been able to get to a safe spot.
3. I’m sure there is racism and classism involved in the government response to this disaster. That’s really no reason to snipe at San Diegans for being self-centered or businesses for donating. The response here has been phenomenal. Local companies have been donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to help people and animals alike. Witnessing the devastation that people are going through, I have to say I don’t really give a fuck if it was for publicity. People need it. In addition, the individual response has been staggering. Students at UCSD are in no immediate threat of evac, so there’s a large group of students available to volunteer. The pockets of downtown and the coastal area that remain safe are full of people that are able to volunteer. Qualcomm is turning away volunteers and donations, as are several other evacuation sites. I think that’s something to applaud, not something to snidely comment on.
“Are you serious? Comparing Katrina and this?”
Of course they should be compared, as best as possible while recognizing the differences.
If NOLA is perpetually thought of in some circles as some kind of once-in-a-lifetime event that will never occur again any where else, the stage is set for effing over the next set of poor/ethnic/unwanted American citizens when they are faced with some disaster.
How hard is it to understand that we are in this together? That we have to have each other’s backs, that we owe respect and support to our fellow citizens, regardless of economic status, racial background, location in the country, political allegiance, etc.?
When we stick together it’s very difficult for political flim-flammers to take advantage of us.
But if we allow ourselves to believe we have no obligations toward each other, that we share nothing more than an approximate geographic location with other Americans, that self-sufficiency is all that god allows - we’re screwed…
Kate — New Orleans SURVIVED the hurricaine — it was a big blow and a surge of water.
It was the U.S, Army Corps of Engineers’ levee system that FAILED and puit the city under water. Billions and billions of our tax dollars spent over many decades for shoddy workmanship and faulty pumping systems.
Since Katrina we got some more horseshit pumps in place, after millions of dollars spent with a Jeb Bush-connected company. Later, rinse, repeat…
alli,
Thanks for the advice on finding Davis’s essays on wildfires. From what I remember of the book (and I read it in 1999, so feel free to take my summary with a grain of salt) Davis analyzes both the ecological role of fire — it’s as inevitable in chaparral canyons as snow is in the Rockies — and the way that race, class and politics determine social reactions to large fires and our sense of what’s “reasonable”, both in terms of building/development and in terms of the human costs of disasters.
That is, it’s “reasonable” both to build multi-million dollar homes in a fire trap like Malibu and then demand massive public resources to defend the (rich, white homeowners’) houses from the inevitable and predictable (naturally-occurring) fire, and to rebuild afterwards; and also to build fire-trap tenements in downtown LA, when fire-resistant residences would be only a little more expensive, and then not care much when (poor, Latino renters’) lives are lost in the inevitable and predictable (human-caused) fires.
Davis’s analysis is a lot more detailed and sophisticated than my summary. But I hope I haven’t distorted one of his conclusions too much.
Woah, wait a second.
First, New Orleans and California are dissimilar in many, many ways, not just race. I know because I grew up in California and my husband grew up in New Orleans.
CA is a wealthy state and LA is a poor state and that has to do with a whole lot of things besides race. Not saying race isn’t also involved, just saying there are lots of other issues, too.
Second, forest fires are a regular occurrence in CA. VERY regular. I worked on seven fires in ONE summer. These particular fires right now are big, but the scope of damage to humans is really nothing compared to Katrina. NOLA gets Hurricanes and floods, but Katrina was beyond regular, beyond irregular, beyond emergency. Katrina was total and utter devastation, like a bomb hit it. Katrina was the Army Corps of Engineers fucked up and then so did every other government agency afterwards.
And it’s not even a very good comparison unless the fires actually roll through Los Angeles or San Diego. Comparing the numbers of evacuated people and the services they’re currently offered is pointless since it’s a hell of a lot easier to provide services for people when the power works and the city isn’t under water/on fire.
Third, why do you have to belittle one group in order to get justice for another group? These comparisons between Denver snow storms and California fires with Katrina do a disservice to everyone. Just because one part of the country has some of it’s shit together in a few ways doesn’t mean we need to take that away from them. In some ways, we’ve learned from Katrina and can apply those lessons to other disasters.
Oh, and lastly, my parents live in California. And my not wealthy grandmother lives in San Diego. And she can’t drive herself to one of these oh-so-luxurious evacuation centers. If the fires come rolling through SD there will be a very different story to tell than how stuck up these snobby richies are. There will be stories about old folks being left to die and stories about panicked mobs doing crazy things.
And, why do you all trust the media so much? This is the same media that couldn’t pronounce New Orleans and the same media that told you only 16 pets died from the pet food recall and the same media that prefers to discuss Paris Hilton and Ellen’s dog than Darfur or Burma.
Southern California is not all rich white folks who want yoga and fuck you for acting like it is.
Elaine, who are you aiming that diatribe at?…
Mike, generally at those who agree with the AP assessment of things as “The worst that most endured in their exodus was heavy traffic and smoky haze.”
If anyone cares, as usual San Diegan Tbogg has a few pithy words for us.
Thanks for bringing this up, Pam. I would say that the situation are vastly different, but that the media is using it a subtle or not so subtle source of comparison to basically smear New Orleans. Let’s put it this way, the people in Qualcomm are not locked in, are not surrounded by water and can easily move about. There is no cause for panic whatsoever, and they are outside. Their bathrooms can be resuppiled and cleaned. They are not stranded. The media are pathetic on this issue. It makes me sick.
I just wanted to chime in from San Diego too. My neighborhood is absolutely unlikely to be threatened by fire, by the way. Many good points have been made about the practical differences in the disasters, but I have been thinking about New Orleans the whole time. I don’t have a TV, and I’m only following local news, so I don’t know if it has been made clear that the fires are not burning in the city proper, but in the surrounding suburbs and rural areas. Many, but not all, of these areas are not just affluent, but extremely affluent. Multi-million dollar homes are burning. There definitely is rumbling here that some areas are getting more coverage, information and attention than others.
I teach elementary school, and all of our schools are closed for the week. Our district spans the wealthy white fire affected areas and the low income diverse areas, out of harms way, where I teach. It seems I have the luxury of sitting home doing nothing because there is apparently a glut of volunteers. But I am wondering about my students’ families. They are not in a fire area, but what are they doing for child care? Are their parents able to go to work? Have they lost their place of work to the fires? There’s no news about this sort of thing. The air quality is also very bad everywhere.
But, as someone did mention, we have fires every year and we had very large fires in 2003, and much of the news talk about lessons learned is from those, including people evacuating when they are told to. Though there is a local congressman on the radio right now mentioning how all of the various state, local and federal agencies are communicating so much better since Katrina, and that is helping. Hmmm.
If I have a point, I guess it’s that the local disparities based on race and class will only become more apparent as the fires are extinguished and people work on putting their lives back together with varying degrees of community and/or government support, though it may not be reflected in the media.
I have also realized that I put together ideas too slowly to be a very effective commenter.
Hrm, looks like I jumped the blogcycle for most of a day.
What Idiots, I’m Black I live in San Diego and I see a Brown Haze right now but, to compare both disasters on the basis of race is wrong, first, FEMA didnt start working until Tuesday, before that it was the San Diego OES, second although both disasters, the magnitude is much different, in New Orleans the City’s Infrastructure was totally gone, you couldn’t drive, you couldn’t walk and there was no time for preparation, San Diego has done this before, ever heard of the Cedar Fire? the services were in place, the shelters were in place all the needed resources were in place, san diego knew what would and could happen and the people just needed to remember where to go, much different then a wall of water washing through unsuspecting neighborhood but, in that case you could look at the incompetence of New Orleans and Louisana’s City Officials…PS California is a Minority-Majority State….
Mike:
The sickness is in the yahoos who see the relative success in dealing with people displaced by a far smaller disaster and use it to beat up the folks who got displaced or killed by a far larger one.
Another side of the people volunteering is that, since the San Diego itself is completely functional, they know that whatever good works they do now will serve as great advertising in the months and years to come.
I’m in San Diego too, near the edge of one of the fires. My home is in an evacuation zone, but since I’m living in Sin, I’m out of harms way — does that mean there’s something to living in Sin? I sure think so!
While all packed up to go, since even the tiny Hamlet of Sin can be threatened by the fires, there’s only been a couple moments of “Should I stay or go”, and mostly its been watching the news, and fielding phone calls.
I’d also say, being someone who is employed in an area closely connected to the local infrastructure, that San Diego is hardly in the clear, and it is a bit of a battle of attrition.
Anyway, I’ve been wanting to explore this topic for a while, mostly because of the inevitable screaming of the Govenor’s comments about Qualcom Stadium. When the Govenor held press conferences, he did what he was supposed to do. He said what people needed to hear, and gladhanded. Despite my political differences with him, he’s doing an okay job. It doesn’t mean he gets my vote, since this is what govenors are supposed to do.
The mayor has been doing a very good job. “I’m the mayor, I’m giving you, the people, the executive summary as we understand the position, and instructions for you to follow. Stick around, and specific agencies will give you a report on the status of what’s going on — as best we know. I’ll recap, and reinterate my instructions. I will then get the hell off the air and let news flow until I can provide you more useful information, usually within a couple hours.” I’m warming to this mayor because he recently gave a very heartfelt support of gay marraige, and now is doing what I consider a good executive’s job in handling a crisis with what materials are on hand.
And the materials on hand are pretty good. I did a tiny bit of digging, and the average income in California in 2006 vs the average income in Louisiana is larger by around 20K. That means, when its time to bug out, everyone has transportation. It also means those of us who don’t have to bugout have resources to give. To me, this is really the two americas at work at the economic level. On my cellphone, I get updates as conditions change. On my *cellphone*. I can afford that. I can used text messaging, which doesn’t burn up as much bandwidth, so people can get word out faster. So while there is maybe at most 1/3 of the city evacuated, there’s 2/3s of the city who have means and motive to help them get moving.
A friend of mine in Solona Beach was fretting about whether to stay or go. I joked with him that 5 north was clogged, and that the 56 was clogged, so he should go south and go to the airport and fly *anywhere*. My SO and I joked about it as well — because well, we can. My friend actually did it, going to — get this — another office of his company! Nothing screams two americas to me like being able to take a jaunt on a jet to evacuate *and* because you’re part of a big company, you don’t even spend that much of your own capital to do it! Not everyone is so lucky to be sure, but because we’re people, and we have so much disposable resources, we’ll help those in need.
What I’ve been proud about San Diegans for is that even though we have a fair number of disagreements (we are quite conservative down here, so there’s lots of heated discussions) for the most part, that’s been packed away to make room for the tranfer of emergency information.
Thanks to my resources, I’m very well connected. Cellphone, Internet — people are so well connected that those without TV forgot about AM radio, and were relying on internet. But I don’t want to get bogged down too much in communication infrastructre — I’ll actually do that in another reply, because there’s cool stuff there.
So money — California’s economic benefit — has helped with communication and transportion — and resources. We have a larger tax base than New Orleans because the people make more and spend more. I’d argue the money makes our infrastructure better and more able to handle shocks. We’ve been moving *horses* around, which is a herculean task, but we have the resources to do it — We being San Diego and its citizens. Its the reason why Qualcom is able to provide all these things. I’d bet the Yoga instruction is an instructor or instructors who just want to do something, and have the resources to do it. Local businesses are bored, so they make 50 pizzas and do a good thing, and get to deduct it — a great mix of finanacial incentive and “the right thing to do”.
At the same time, I’d like to point out that an end is in sight with fires. People on the inside — safe from the fires — generally know there’s a limit to what the fire can do before it burns out. So our timeline is on days. But, that’s another rant about the nature of the two disasters.
so just one last thing about the economics. we generally consider the Red Cross to be a bit of a pain when it comes to supplying creature comforts. I try to explain because its a different operational framework and they have different levels of responsibility (taking louse-infested pillows is a genuine worry for them) but in many respects it doesn’t jive with fulfilling the immediate need.
so just my .02, cheers.
I’m in San Diego too, near the edge of one of the fires. My home is in an evacuation zone, but since I’m living in Sin, I’m out of harms way — does that mean there’s something to living in Sin? I sure think so!
While all packed up to go, since even the tiny Hamlet of Sin can be threatened by the fires, there’s only been a couple moments of “Should I stay or go”, and mostly its been watching the news, and fielding phone calls.
I’d also say, being someone who is employed in an area closely connected to the local infrastructure, that San Diego is hardly in the clear, and it is a bit of a battle of attrition.
Anyway, I’ve been wanting to explore this topic for a while, mostly because of the inevitable screaming of the Govenor’s comments about Qualcom Stadium. When the Govenor held press conferences, he did what he was supposed to do. He said what people needed to hear, and gladhanded. Despite my political differences with him, he’s doing an okay job. It doesn’t mean he gets my vote, since this is what govenors are supposed to do.
The mayor has been doing a very good job. “I’m the mayor, I’m giving you, the people, the executive summary as we understand the position, and instructions for you to follow. Stick around, and specific agencies will give you a report on the status of what’s going on — as best we know. I’ll recap, and reinterate my instructions. I will then get the hell off the air and let news flow until I can provide you more useful information, usually within a couple hours.” I’m warming to this mayor because he recently gave a very heartfelt support of gay marraige, and now is doing what I consider a good executive’s job in handling a crisis with what materials are on hand.
And the materials on hand are pretty good. I did a tiny bit of digging, and the average income in California in 2006 vs the average income in Louisiana is larger by around 20K. That means, when its time to bug out, everyone has transportation. It also means those of us who don’t have to bugout have resources to give. To me, this is really the two americas at work at the economic level. On my cellphone, I get updates as conditions change. On my *cellphone*. I can afford that. I can used text messaging, which doesn’t burn up as much bandwidth, so people can get word out faster. So while there is maybe at most 1/3 of the city evacuated, there’s 2/3s of the city who have means and motive to help them get moving.
A friend of mine in Solona Beach was fretting about whether to stay or go. I joked with him that 5 north was clogged, and that the 56 was clogged, so he should go south and go to the airport and fly *anywhere*. My SO and I joked about it as well — because well, we can. My friend actually did it, going to — get this — another office of his company! Nothing screams two americas to me like being able to take a jaunt on a jet to evacuate *and* because you’re part of a big company, you don’t even spend that much of your own capital to do it! Not everyone is so lucky to be sure, but because we’re people, and we have so much disposable resources, we’ll help those in need.
What I’ve been proud about San Diegans for is that even though we have a fair number of disagreements (we are quite conservative down here, so there’s lots of heated discussions) for the most part, that’s been packed away to make room for the tranfer of emergency information.
Thanks to my resources, I’m very well connected. Cellphone, Internet — people are so well connected that those without TV forgot about AM radio, and were relying on internet. But I don’t want to get bogged down too much in communication infrastructre — I’ll actually do that in another reply, because there’s cool stuff there.
So money — California’s economic benefit — has helped with communication and transportion — and resources. We have a larger tax base than New Orleans because the people make more and spend more. I’d argue the money makes our infrastructure better and more able to handle shocks. We’ve been moving *horses* around, which is a herculean task, but we have the resources to do it — We being San Diego and its citizens. Its the reason why Qualcom is able to provide all these things. I’d bet the Yoga instruction is an instructor or instructors who just want to do something, and have the resources to do it. Local businesses are bored, so they make 50 pizzas and do a good thing, and get to deduct it — a great mix of finanacial incentive and “the right thing to do”.
At the same time, I’d like to point out that an end is in sight with fires. People on the inside — safe from the fires — generally know there’s a limit to what the fire can do before it burns out. So our timeline is on days. But, that’s another rant about the nature of the two disasters.
so just one last thing about the economics. we generally consider the Red Cross to be a bit of a pain when it comes to supplying creature comforts. I try to explain because its a different operational framework and they have different levels of responsibility (taking louse-infested pillows is a genuine worry for them) but in many respects it doesn’t jive with fulfilling the immediate need.
so just my .02, cheers.
I’m in San Diego too, near the edge of one of the fires. My home is in an evacuation zone, but since I’m living in Sin, I’m out of harms way — does that mean there’s something to living in Sin? I sure think so!
While all packed up to go, since even the tiny Hamlet of Sin can be threatened by the fires, there’s only been a couple moments of “Should I stay or go”, and mostly its been watching the news, and fielding phone calls.
I’d also say, being someone who is employed in an area closely connected to the local infrastructure, that San Diego is hardly in the clear, and it is a bit of a battle of attrition.
Anyway, I’ve been wanting to explore this topic for a while, mostly because of the inevitable screaming of the Govenor’s comments about Qualcom Stadium. When the Govenor held press conferences, he did what he was supposed to do. He said what people needed to hear, and gladhanded. Despite my political differences with him, he’s doing an okay job. It doesn’t mean he gets my vote, since this is what govenors are supposed to do.
The mayor has been doing a very good job. “I’m the mayor, I’m giving you, the people, the executive summary as we understand the position, and instructions for you to follow. Stick around, and specific agencies will give you a report on the status of what’s going on — as best we know. I’ll recap, and reinterate my instructions. I will then get the hell off the air and let news flow until I can provide you more useful information, usually within a couple hours.” I’m warming to this mayor because he recently gave a very heartfelt support of gay marraige, and now is doing what I consider a good executive’s job in handling a crisis with what materials are on hand.
And the materials on hand are pretty good. I did a tiny bit of digging, and the average income in California in 2006 vs the average income in Louisiana is larger by around 20K. That means, when its time to bug out, everyone has transportation. It also means those of us who don’t have to bugout have resources to give. To me, this is really the two americas at work at the economic level. On my cellphone, I get updates as conditions change. On my *cellphone*. I can afford that. I can used text messaging, which doesn’t burn up as much bandwidth, so people can get word out faster. So while there is maybe at most 1/3 of the city evacuated, there’s 2/3s of the city who have means and motive to help them get moving.
A friend of mine in Solona Beach was fretting about whether to stay or go. I joked with him that 5 north was clogged, and that the 56 was clogged, so he should go south and go to the airport and fly *anywhere*. My SO and I joked about it as well — because well, we can. My friend actually did it, going to — get this — another office of his company! Nothing screams two americas to me like being able to take a jaunt on a jet to evacuate *and* because you’re part of a big company, you don’t even spend that much of your own capital to do it! Not everyone is so lucky to be sure, but because we’re people, and we have so much disposable resources, we’ll help those in need.
What I’ve been proud about San Diegans for is that even though we have a fair number of disagreements (we are quite conservative down here, so there’s lots of heated discussions) for the most part, that’s been packed away to make room for the tranfer of emergency information.
Thanks to my resources, I’m very well connected. Cellphone, Internet — people are so well connected that those without TV forgot about AM radio, and were relying on internet. But I don’t want to get bogged down too much in communication infrastructre — I’ll actually do that in another reply, because there’s cool stuff there.
So money — California’s economic benefit — has helped with communication and transportation — and resources. We have a larger tax base than New Orleans because the people make more and spend more. I’d argue the money makes our infrastructure better and more able to handle shocks. We’ve been moving *horses* around, which is a herculean task, but we have the resources to do it — We being San Diego and its citizens. Its the reason why Qualcom is able to provide all these things. I’d bet the Yoga instruction is an instructor or instructors who just want to do something, and have the resources to do it. Local businesses are bored, so they make 50 pizzas and do a good thing, and get to deduct it — a great mix of finanacial incentive and “the right thing to do”.
At the same time, I’d like to point out that an end is in sight with fires. People on the inside — safe from the fires — generally know there’s a limit to what the fire can do before it burns out. So our timeline is on days. But, that’s another rant about the nature of the two disasters.
so just my .02, cheers.
I’m in San Diego too, near the edge of one of the fires. My home is in an evacuation zone, but since I’m living in Sin, I’m out of harms way — does that mean there’s something to living in Sin? I sure think so!
While all packed up to go, since even the tiny Hamlet of Sin can be threatened by the fires, there’s only been a couple moments of “Should I stay or go”, and mostly its been watching the news, and fielding phone calls.
I’d also say, being someone who is employed in an area closely connected to the local infrastructure, that San Diego is hardly in the clear, and it is a bit of a battle of attrition.
Anyway, I’ve been wanting to explore this topic for a while, mostly because of the inevitable screaming of the Govenor’s comments about Qualcom Stadium. When the Govenor held press conferences, he did what he was supposed to do. He said what people needed to hear, and gladhanded. Despite my political differences with him, he’s doing an okay job. It doesn’t mean he gets my vote, since this is what govenors are supposed to do.
The mayor has been doing a very good job. “I’m the mayor, I’m giving you, the people, the executive summary as we understand the position, and instructions for you to follow. Stick around, and specific agencies will give you a report on the status of what’s going on — as best we know. I’ll recap, and reinterate my instructions. I will then get the hell off the air and let news flow until I can provide you more useful information, usually within a couple hours.” I’m warming to this mayor because he recently gave a very heartfelt support of gay marraige, and now is doing what I consider a good executive’s job in handling a crisis with what materials are on hand.
And the materials on hand are pretty good. I did a tiny bit of digging, and the average income in California in 2006 vs the average income in Louisiana is larger by around 20K. That means, when its time to bug out, everyone has transportation. It also means those of us who don’t have to bugout have resources to give. To me, this is really the two americas at work at the economic level. On my cellphone, I get updates as conditions change. On my *cellphone*. I can afford that. I can used text messaging, which doesn’t burn up as much bandwidth, so people can get word out faster. So while there is maybe at most 1/3 of the city evacuated, there’s 2/3s of the city who have means and motive to help them get moving.
A friend of mine in Solona Beach was fretting about whether to stay or go. I joked with him that 5 north was clogged, and that the 56 was clogged, so he should go south and go to the airport and fly *anywhere*. My SO and I joked about it as well — because well, we can. My friend actually did it, going to — get this — another office of his company! Nothing screams two americas to me like being able to take a jaunt on a jet to evacuate *and* because you’re part of a big company, you don’t even spend that much of your own capital to do it! Not everyone is so lucky to be sure, but because we’re people, and we have so much disposable resources, we’ll help those in need.
What I’ve been proud about San Diegans for is that even though we have a fair number of disagreements (we are quite conservative down here, so there’s lots of heated discussions) for the most part, that’s been packed away to make room for the tranfer of emergency information.
Thanks to my resources, I’m very well connected. Cellphone, Internet — people are so well connected that those without TV forgot about AM radio, and were relying on internet. But I don’t want to get bogged down too much in communication infrastructre — I’ll actually do that in another reply, because there’s cool stuff there.
So money — California’s economic benefit — has helped with communication and transportion — and resources. We have a larger tax base than New Orleans because the people make more and spend more. I’d argue the money makes our infrastructure better and more able to handle shocks. We’ve been moving *horses* around, which is a herculean task, but we have the resources to do it — We being San Diego and its citizens. Its the reason why Qualcom is able to provide all these things. I’d bet the Yoga instruction is an instructor or instructors who just want to do something, and have the resources to do it. Local businesses are bored, so they make 50 pizzas and do a good thing, and get to deduct it — a great mix of finanacial incentive and “the right thing to do”.
At the same time, I’d like to point out that an end is in sight with fires. People on the inside — safe from the fires — generally know there’s a limit to what the fire can do before it burns out. So our timeline is on days. But, that’s another rant about the nature of the two disasters.
so just my .02, cheers.
Okay, so I thought I’d add some other thoughts about comparing Katrina and what is lovingly called “Firestorm 2007″. You know you’ve made it as a disaster when you’ve got your theme music and logo on the news channels.
So, looking at the disasters from an infrastructure perspective — communications, gas, water, etc. Katrina’s aftermath has done something that the wildfires currently threaten — infrastructure in New Orleans was pretty much wiped out. When you look at a city as something that provides goods and services — including the means to get out — Katrina took that out immediately, while the firestorms take an opposite tack.
We in San Diego County love our space. That, and land as you get closer to the city proper is expensive. We will commute pretty far just to get our chunk of land. And that sprawl as moved much faster than city services. San Diego is pretty darn huge, and trying to support it with our fire infrastructure is a bit hard. That, and we’re developer driven. Build it, and they will buy it. what they don’t tell you is that the local infrastructure might not be able to handle it.
So as the fires progresses, the fronts actually start to get smaller as they approach San Diego. You lose bits of Rancho Benardo, protecting as much as you can, you lose bits of Poway. If you live in a ranch far out in the scrub, even clearing out a good chunk of firebreak won’t stop embers from flying in 60mph winds. the fires encroach on more and more city centers. Now the city infrastructre can be brought to bear. Fire hydrants can offer up all the water the pumper trucks can handle, and planes are a huge help, but not critical liek when there’s not as much water pressure readily available. I’m asserting that as the fire progresses, the infrastructure becomes more effective in dealing with it, while with Katrinia, the infrastructure was directly attacked, and wasn’t there to help the people.
As Tbogg pointed out (mentioned in an earlier comment) Katrina put water everywhere, while fires are kind of spotty things. That makes it harder to actually know when you’ve eliminated the problem, but the contiguous area is smaller, which means we get to shuffle refugees around, while there really wasn’t great options of where to go. The fires also don’t take out highways in the long term. Driving out of the Ninth Ward after it was flooded wasn’t quite so simple.
If you want to see something nauseating, check out some of the comments over at Salon’s War Room. One brave, courageous anonymous commenter called the black victims of New Orleans “animals” and trotted out an anecdote about his friend, the National Guardsman.
Righties are comparing the “civility” of people not really trapped at the Qualcomm stadium to desperate people trapped without food, water, electricity or plumbing for five days. Lovely groupmindthink, isn’t it?
Paul:
San Diego’s “success” is a bit early to call. You accurately point out that infrastructure is important in this, and that infrastructure is under strain.
Did anyone get the feeling from the coverage that a lot of business were donating for the promotional exposure, likje they wanted credit in the media, or maybe to promote themselves onsite? I do not want to name businesses because it may not be a correct impression, but that’s how it seemed to me.
A lot of businesses tried to donate during Katrina, but they were turned away by DHS. Wal-Mart alone sent several trucks of desperately needed ice, but they were all turned away.
It’s astounding the sheer amount of help that was simply turned away during Katrina.
The culture of doing for yourself, like having a car, even if you can’t really afford one, ‘cause public transit really sucks; like having an earthquake kit because since the ’60s they have hit every public preschool plus kid with the need to have one (and it works for most emergencies), like the government messed up last time this happened so we had better be ready to get out ourselves, etc. I’m from a mixed racial family. Imagine, divorced mother with 3 kids who obviously don’t have the same father since one is an olive complected brunnette, one a norse blond, one a light-skinned black in mid-70s Texas. Do not lecture me about racial desrimination if you want to be taken seriously.
The other things that made the NO a major cluster were more based on race, but the Superdome was the mess it was more for the reasons of being utterly cut off, surrounded, with no unthreatened nearby areas that could offer support nothing were bigger and more devistating than the racism that definately was there. Now as someone else mentioned, if you want to compair with the Astrodome, yes, absolutely the biggest differences were 1-racism and 2-economic classism.
I appologize for the rotten grammar & spelling; posting from bad connection.
So sorry about the mulitple posts. Supposed to just be two there.
what a n00b
So now that I think I’ve got my rampant repeat posts under control, I wanted to hit on one final area, which is the true racial issues that are going on, and the fact that to San Diego’s credit, there has been no white on white violence in the stadium
So here’s the thing. We’ve got lots of communication, we’ve got lots of infrastructure, and people have only been there three days, and the situation is improving. My perception of Katrina is that the situtation was in flux for days.
That, and most people arrived with vehicles. If they don’t like it, they can leave.
Its no perfect for them. The worry about whether your home is safe or not is maddening. At the same time, local government has been good about making sure the information gets out and that there is at the very very least, the illusion of everyone being in it together.
So the situations between NOLA and San Diego are black and white — no pun intended. There’s no wild stories of looting or rampant drug abuse, because in people’s minds there’s already the given that those things wouldn’t happen — so the stories would have a level of belief that would have to be overcome to even start to become credible. With NOLA, you had a echo chamber to make sure that every racial fear and sterotype was played out, and believed on the thinnest shred of evidence.
I worked in a Katrina shelter for 30 days in Austin, Texas. We had massage therapy, hair dressers, AA meetings, and Willie Nelson and Cyril Neville playing every night. Sandra Bullock showed up with big screen tvs and video games for the kids. We had catfish frys and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream brought in by Michael Dell himself. We had computers and phones available.
This was all after the people were evacuated from the Superdome and brought to us by plane. We were the very last major shelter to open and the people who came to us were very ill. They were all dehydrated, many had been without vital medicines for more than a week. Lots were addicts who had gone without drugs. The oldest wast 98, the yougest a few days old. We are pround that we lost only one of 5,000 we took into our shelter. This was not done by the Feds or the State. It was done by the local government and the Red Cross.
The situation in the Superdome had a lot of factors including racism, and government incompetence. It was also an island in the middle of a flooded city.
The reason the California evacuations went fairly smoothly is the 95% or the evacuees have cars. In new Orleans most people did not own cars. The government did not evacuate the people in New Orleans. It also did not evacuate the people in California. They evacuated themselves. If you are counting on the federal government to save you in a disaster you are truely doomed.
I have to second all the people who are pointing out that the “lessons learned” are from the 2003 fires. Which, in addition to hitting San Diego really hard, hit hard in a lot of places all at once all throughout the southland, just like now. (Although I don’t remember them being quite so synchronized.)
And as far as lessons not learned, if BushCo’s numbers weren’t so bad that they really can’t go any lower, I’d say the Republican’s really ought to be worried about claiming victory too early. The current fires in the San Bernardino Mountains are largely caused by lots of dead trees due to drought, pollution, and more specifically the bark beetle infestation that thrives on unhealthy trees and warmer winters. BushCo set aside money to help deal with this after the fires in 2003, but nothing was ever really done. And Bush can try shifting the blame to local governments (who partly deserve it) but that doesn’t let the Republican’s off the hook in this very red county.
Seriously. And lets not forget about the people who were not allowed to leave NO once Katrina had passed. Speaking of which, I haven’t heard about this on the news.
Jenny (Sewing while the city burns):
All I can picture is either a cartoon Nero with his fiddle, or Madame Defarge from Dickens’ “A Tale Of Two Cities”- which I guess this post is about, huh?
Seriously, hope everyone this is currently affecting will be okay and safe. I had family there for the 2003 Cedar fires who have since moved to Utah, but I still have family in Laguna Nigel, Santa Maria (I think the fire near them is out) and San Diego- no word yet.
Seriously, hope everyone this is currently affecting will be okay and safe. I had family there for the 2003 Cedar fires who have since moved to Utah, but I still have family in Laguna Nigel, Santa Maria (I think the fire near them is out) and San Diego- no word yet.
My best friend lives in Laguna Niguel and they’re fine. They’re not even getting much smoke because of the way the hills run in that specific area.
Thanks, Mnemosyne… appreciate the update very much. The uncle out there (has lived in CA for 50 years) has an older sister here in Maine who’s almost 90; I’ll pass the word along to her in the morning. Hopefully my folks in Santa Maria will answer their email by then…
ohcomeon
Oh yeah, well we had Sting show up! and we handed out a gold bar to everyone who visited!
I could only wish.
I’ve been hearing all day this narrative that the CA fires are going to be the anti-katrina.
This self-congratulatory tone, as if we’ve balanced some cosmic ledger,
Shouldn’t we still be at least faking an interest in making katrina the anti-katrina?
Perhaps we ought to think in the longer term: if building in the hills (I am somewhat familiar with L.A., but I don’t know if San Diego shows a similar pattern) represents white suburban flight, do we want to continue this pattern?
And what will happen in the even longer term (a few decades, perhaps; maybe a century) when both the oil and the water run out?
Mass, #42: “It was the U.S, Army Corps of Engineers’ levee system that FAILED and puit the city under water. Billions and billions of our tax dollars spent over many decades for shoddy workmanship and faulty pumping systems.”
I was going to recommend this National Geographic piece from August for anyone interested in the engineering/natural problems facing New Orleans, both from a historical perspective and in the future.
Why do you think that is?
Because the San Diego and California governments are competently administered, while the New Orleans and Louisiana governments are run by thieves.
That doesn’t boil down to “race” for me; I’ve seen competent governments run by and for blacks and incompetent governments run by and for whites, and vice versa.
It’s just about competence. LA has very little of it.
@PhoenixRising: did you at all consider how your post is only a search-and-replace away from the standard freep/townhall bigotry? I joined a few thousand other people trying to help out earlier this week and the crowd of volunteers wasn’t exactly a uniform collection of affluent WASPs. If you actually spent much time talking to San Diegans you’d have learned how unrepresentative those ads are.
@Pam/dna: the entire argument argument is critically flawed because it’s based on ignorance about what actually happened: for most people in San Diego, this has been like a public holiday - granted, a tense one waiting for the power to go out or the winds to shift, but still most people simply stayed home and waited for news updates. This meant that you have 3+ million people in a relatively affluent community whose houses, cars, etc. are largely untouched and whose employers probably told them to take the week off. Most of the people who were evacuated spent a night or two with friends and returned to an undamaged home.
This isn’t to diminish the suffering of people who did lose everything but simply to point out that there were a LOT of people ready to help as soon as they could - the local news has frequently announced that the shelters are overwhelmed with volunteers and donations, in many cases having a 1:1 ratio of volunteers and victims. Critically, this also meant that people weren’t stuck waiting for the government to respond: I know the guys who setup the wireless network at the stadium - that was two guys using equipment from a local free community network and they were done before FEMA really got involved. Why? Because they didn’t have to be preoccupied with their personal survival.
There’s simply no way to meaningfully compare this with a city which lost almost all of its infrastructure and was largely written off. Want to bet that Katrina would have gone slightly differently if 85% of the houses were untouched and still had food, water, electricity, internet access, etc?
There were many disgusting things about the way Katrina unfolded (I’m still nauseated by the ease with which the media spread those vile “you know those darkies” rumors) but it’s equally disgusting to watch racists like dna attempt to claim this is different simply due to it being “white people” this time around. I was actually rather disappointed to see this article here as I generally consider Pandagon a place where ideological axe-grinders are slapped down, not echoed.
@sara - that’s the big question on everyone’s mind right now. Sen. Feinstein was on the air commenting that we need to stop the sprawl if we don’t want more fires but it’s not like that was either unknown or vocally supported by her before this happened. Our local Republican (Duncan Hunter) has already been complaining about the “red tape” rebuilding will face because we’re going to force poor homebuilders to make their new houses meet the current fire code.
What we need is to start passing the costs along to homeowners to discourage people living outside the city unless they’re prepared to deal with fire hazards seriously. Similarly the best thing we could do for water right now would be to stop subsidizing it and price it more appropriately for what is close to a desert climate.
Chris, as I said, I spend a lot of time around San Diegans, who in the aggregate are the most racist Westerners I’ve encountered in my life. But they’re all really nice about it and in a perfect state of denial about the fact that they live in segregation. Just one example, because I don’t have all night: My BIL’s law firm has one Latino partner and no one who works there in a capacity other than janitorial uses Spanish at work.
So it’s not at all surprising to me that, in the context of people just like the massage therapists being caught in an awful situation, there was all kinds of help available for the evacuees.
It’s part of human nature to feel compelled to help members of your own tribe. There’s no reason to pretend otherwise at the expense of reality. The reality is that them that has, keeps, and the fire victims are deserving poor in the minds of the undeserving rich.
And yeah, it would be a super-smart idea to change laws to force developers and their customers to eat the costs of encroaching on the wildland interface, and to set a price for water that reflects its value. All excellent ideas to rebuild a better San Diego.
If New Orleans had been white, the levees would not have been left to rot in the first place.
I think that the difference is largely up to the competence of local officals. That’s not to bash people in Louisianna, in So. CA we have fires every year. Not this bad, not always in the same places, but annually. That does make a difference. I just don’t think the Bush administation could run something smoothly if it wanted to.
“I think that the difference is largely up to the competence of local officals.”
Speaking of which, an article in today’s LA times says that a former SD fire chief says that the SD fire has caused the most damage to property in part bc the SD area refuses to pass new taxes to pay for fire safety and that the planning officials let developers have free reign. Don’t know how true that is.
In any case, I think the biggest difference is affluence - which you can’t really separate from racism. LA and CA has pretty much the same basic plan: self evacuation. The only reason why it works here but didn’t work there is because most of us here have cars. Several of them per family, usually.
Can I ask as a non-American, does California have volunteer fire-fighters? In Australia, where we regularly have large bushfires, most rural areas have volunteer fire-fighters who operate their own truck and facility. They spend summer weekends training and controlling fire hazards in the local area - doing backburning, clearing bush, opening access lanes, etc. They are also called up for major fires, and I think also do rescue operations on car accidents, etc. These people are, as far as I know, unpaid, but are seen as the only way to control bushfires in areas of sparse population.
Does California have these people, or is the entire bushfire planning and response system based on paid firefighters?
The US government has had nothing to do with the fire till late tuesday and wedsday. This is clearly state and local planning. In california firefighters even in cities train for this. We train prisoners to fight fires. If anything the fire is partially the US gov’s fault for not funding preventive measures leaving it totally to counties, states and cities. CA in general is better prepared for distaster. Between Earthquakes, Flooding, Dams, levees, fires, tsunamis, frost, dust storms and other disaters CA has to be ready. And yes we had levee problems but the state gov jumped in when the feds were dragging their feet and refusing to call it a distater.
Just a sidebar, but concerning Katrina, hardly anyone knows that, responding to a call from the doctor at Charity Hospital in NOLA, Al Gore personally rented a jetliner at his own expense to fly down there and evacuate the patients in the hospital.
Gore has never talked about that and neither has the “liberal” press, at least for the most part.
The economic make-up of the areas has everything to do with the response of evacuees and volunteers. First, the vast majority of those who lost their homes did not lose their source of income (jobs). Secondly, most of those who lost their homes likely had insurance to cover their loses; those in the Superdome lost their homes & belongings w/o any chance of having them replaced (by insurance or their own earning power). And lastly, those in the surrounding areas of the fire, as someone pointed out earlier, are fairly affluent (median price of a house in SD - over $500,000….and many of the areas like Rancho Bernardo, much less Rancho Santa Fe, were priced well above that average). I’m sure they had a lot more financial room to give to their fellow citizens than what neighbors of the Katrina storm had. This is why what you saw being offered at the Q was in stark contrast to what was available to most Katrina victims (the exception being the Austin example…but I’m betting that Austin is a wealthier area than others).
So I think that while race is tied to economics, race wasn’t a factor in the disparity (skin color doesn’t hide hunger). And the republicans had better hope that there isn’t another large-scale disaster in an economically depressed area. Such a disaster would shine more light on their “March Towards Feudalism” and prove John Edwards even more correct about there being two Americas.
Can I ask as a non-American, does California have volunteer fire-fighters?
We have some, mostly in the rural areas. The Very Large Entertainment Conglomerate I work for has its own volunteer fire department because we do some production work and you need to have trained firefighters available at all times.
What people don’t realize is that coastal California is all hills and mountains. If we had a bunch of nice, flat desert to clear brush from, it wouldn’t be as huge a deal, but it’s hard to get people up a steep cliff face. That’s why some people in more rural areas are keeping goats — the goats can get up the steep hills to eat the brush. Even the state and local governments are starting to use them in really hard-to-reach areas.
So I think that while race is tied to economics, race wasn’t a factor in the disparity (skin color doesn’t hide hunger).
Here’s the tricky part: I don’t think it was a factor in the disparity of the rescue efforts or the quality of the shelters. I do think it’s a huge factor in the media coverage that I’ve seen. As someone else said, there’s a self-congratulatory “see how white people handle disaster?” air to a lot of what I’ve been seeing.
The difference between the California fires and Qualcomm Center vs. Katrina and the N.O. Superdome, is that California, both local and statewide, was prepared for brush fires, that occur every fall. All of the departments worked together to handle the evacuations and fight the fires. The feds responded last, as it should be.
On the other hand Ray Nagin and Kathleen Blanco were completely unprepared, even though it was known the levee’s could break at