There are three things that I've thought about that aren't related to Dartmouth this week: South Park, my job as a nanny and wildfires. All three of these things are smoking hot (nanny job in particular), but the wildfires warrant attention that few of us have had time to give them. So, let's turn our attention to the West this week. You might have to squint a bit to see through the Hanover bubble (it's stained with coffee and cigarette smoke these days), but the world is still out there and there's much going on.
Starting last Saturday, a cluster of fires began burning across Southern California. There are currently around 15 fires that have spread across 500,000 acres that span from Santa Barbara County to the Mexican Border. Hardest hit by the fires thus far are San Diego County, Los Angeles County, Orange County and San Bernardino County. As of Thursday morning, a minimum of eight fatalities and 70 injuries had been reported.
According to an article in The New York Times, police have offered $70,000 for an arsonist who is thought to be implicated. The culprit behind the fire's rapid spread and potency, however, is a record-breaking drought that occurred over the past five months. The drought provided the fires with hot weather, a lack of humidity and an abundance of dry timber. Further, the famous Santa Ana Winds (ref: "L.A. Woman" by the Doors) have caused the fires to move rapidly. So far, around 1,500 homes have been damaged by the fire, with experts estimating about $1 billion in damages.
Currently in California, thousands of firefighters are being assisted by thousands of prison inmates (not kidding) on the ground. Meanwhile, in the air, planes dump water and chemical retardants on to the flames.Still, only if the famous Santa Ana winds continue to stay calm, which they have as of Thursday morning, can the fires effectively be controlled. In other words, if you find yourself fighting a wildfire, the best thing to do is hope that it stops.
Technological advances in fighting forest fires have produced computer simulators that examine weather, fuel and topography and project the future of a given flame. NASA plans to fly an unmanned plane (the Ikhana) over the fires. The plane can see through smoke, cloud cover and darkness and capture infrared images of the flames, which will be processed and imported onto Google Earth to produce high-resolution maps of the fires. This officially puts NASA and Google in first place as the sweetest crime fighting team ever.
So far, around 900,000 people have been evacuated from their homes, which NBC Nightly News on Wednesday declared the largest "peacetime movement" of Americans since the Civil War era.
According to the Associated Press, some 10,000 of these refugees have settled into the Qualcomm Stadium, home of the San Diego Chargers. The famous Del Mar racetrack is a camp as well, and the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints has opened up some 13 churches to be used as space for refugees.
It's not difficult to see that the stage is being set for comparison of the Katrina versus Wildfire relief efforts. But, is the match-up a fair one? In both cases, massive amounts of damage have displaced massive numbers of people, and local NFL stadiums were used as places of refuge. The touchdowns stop right around there, however, with the extremity of the Katrina disaster completing a play-by-play trounce of the current situation in California. For starters, compare the $1 billion dollars in estimated damage from the fire to the $25 billion that has stacked up since Katrina. When Katrina hit, it took relief vehicles days to reach many of the more damaged areas; access is simply not an issue at this point in California.
More evacuees in California also owned their own transportation to help them evacuate, and the Associated Press described the atmosphere at the Qualcomm Statium to be "almost festive," with bands setting up impromptu concerts. There were even some massage therapists on hand. And, thank goodness, the paparazzi have reported that Kelsey Grammar and Mel Gibson both evacuated their homes safely.
New Orleans' Ninth Ward is as poor as Orange County is wealthy, and the resources available two the communities follow suit. And, fan or not, no one would dare leave Mel stranded for a few days on the roof of his Malibu home.
Still, after its 2005 faux pas in Mississippi, the livelihood of FEMA rests on its response to the wildfires. President Bush declared the region a federal emergency and cancelled plans to go to St. Louis in favor of a trip to SoCal on Thursday. Wednesday morning, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino showed slides of the federal disaster relief efforts, which include sending over 1,000 firefighters and 280,000 bottles of water to the area.
The wildfires are also coming at a time when the President, waist deep in a pile of policy blunders, is under tremendous pressure to throw the Republican Party a freaking bone to wave in the coming election cycle. I don't mean to jeopardize the magnitude of the threat posed by the current wildfires, but "Aid the California Wildfires" is a gut class when placed next to issues such as Iraq and the economy that, as of late, have been taking the President to school.
Officials in California are hoping that the winds will remain calm, which would help give firefighters a chance to control more of the flames. In the meantime, we'll have to see which way the wind blows, and hope for the best.
