Now that last week’s firestorms have been reduced to smoldering piles of rubble, the firestorm of finger-pointing has begun.
While it’s easy to declare what the right course of action should have been from the vantage point of hindsight, some of the information recently released has rightfully infuriated residents. Many experienced despair and even terror last Monday and Tuesday as the inferno roared out of control, sweeping from east to west.
The first logical question is: why, with all the advance warning of impending Santa Ana winds of gale force, on top of bone-dry brush, was there not more preparation? Couldn’t we have had all available firefighters ready to deploy, with military and National Guard troops on alert?
We’ve heard the excuses of why air power could not be used in such high winds, but we also heard disconcerting facts such as air crews forced to take a mandatory eight-hour rest and then waiting for state “fire spotters” to show up at the airfield ” and when all these elements were finally in place, the winds had picked up and the flights were grounded. What about the large military fire-fighting planes that did not enter San Diego airspace until Wednesday?
It’s flabbergasting to think that vital resources were delayed while bureaucrats shuffled papers and waited for all the i’s to be dotted and t’s crossed, and the proper requests to be filed, as the taxpayers who pay their inflated salaries were running for their lives before their homes burned to the ground.
And speaking of bureaucrats, the Santa Ana winds were bolstered by the huge amount of hot air expelled from politicians swarming for their photo ops. Do we really need every elected official to demonstrate calculated concern for their constituents at endless press conferences, touring the shelters, monitoring the fires (from a safe distance), mouthing platitudes? I received transcripts of many of these politicians’ “remarks,” full of thank-yous to all the other bureaucrats who stood waiting for their chance to thank their compatriots (oh, and the first responders ” who were almost never thanked first). Hardly a word of concrete, useful information was imparted ” no, the gassy emperors fiddled around while the outskirts of Rome burned.
And how about the police announcing they would be checking IDs at Qualcomm ” right after the big brass left with their fuzzy feel-good footage of evacuees and volunteers working in harmony? What timing! Hey, scram, all you people with no homes ” we have a football game to play, and mustn’t disrupt the money-making machine of the sports tycoons!
Some thought should also be given to the wholesale evacuation orders. It certainly is better to err on the side of caution, but perhaps officials got a little too trigger-happy with their new toy, the reverse 911 calls. Another sad fact is that several of the elderly people who were evacuated died, not from the fires but from the trauma of being moved in such a manner.
Now for a constructive suggestion: Why aren’t there more volunteer firefighters, especially in the so-called urban/backcountry interface areas such as Ramona, Fallbrook, Dulzura, Jamul? It doesn’t make sense to maintain a large full-time force of firefighters to battle the rare huge wildfire, but when that perfect firestorm is upon us, we need all the manpower we can get. And who has more of a stake in protecting an area than the residents who live there?
I’m not talking about a wholesale round-up of citizens with no clue, but a trained group of people ready and able to help in times of dire need. We had volunteer firefighters in the Chicago suburbs where I grew up ” a place that gets much more rain than San Diego and does not experience Santa Ana desert winds.
Finally, in the midst of our relief that the fires actually seem to be under control, our homes are intact and families safe, we think of all those who will lay their heads on strange pillows tonight, with no home, with precious keepsakes of their lives turned to ash, and vow that we will help them, and we will be better prepared before the next time.