San Diego Is Not New Orleans

First I just want to let everyone know that we are all ok. The fire did creep close to our back door last Monday, within a few hours of my blog post outlining the various items we would need to transport with us in the event of an evacuation. For those of you familiar with my area, the fire came as close as the mountains behind the Vons/Sears shopping center, which is about 2 miles or so from my house. They did end up evacuating residents on the other side of the freeway, but the location of the reservoir at the base of the mountains averted any real danger to the members of my community. Ironically enough, the reservoir that saved our houses from an assault of volcanic proportions is fittingly named the Sweetwater Reservoir, I could have never predicted how sweet the water would turn out to be.

There have been numerous fires sparking up here and there over the past week, but the two main fires -Witch and Harris – are still smoldering their way throughout San Diego county. At one point 500,000 people in San Diego had been evacuated from their homes, and the last time I checked the statistics, over 1000 houses had been completely totaled by the fiery devastation. There is still ash raining down from the skies, the sun in obstructed by the thick smoke permeating the atmosphere, to say the air quality is less than desirable is an understatement of epic proportions, and there are still hundreds of men and women battling the flames.

That said, San Diego is not and should never be compared to the Katrina disaster in New Orleans. In the same way you can not compare apples and oranges, these two cities are completely different in structure, demographics, and location, not to mention the type of natural disaster was entirely different. The people of San Diego had advance warning of the impending wildfires via reverse 911 calling and extensive media coverage, and they had numerous shelters available to them (at some facilities there were actually more volunteers than evacuees). The community response in San Diego was HUGE – evacuation safe houses were turning down donations, volunteers, and were self-sufficient well before FEMA showed up on the scene a few days after the fact.

The two are also distinctly different in that not all of San Diego county was affected by the fires, whereas the hurricane wiped out anything and everything in its path in New Orleans. The people of San Diego had many locations at their disposal to find refuge and some food; shelter and nourishment are really difficult to provide when your city is completely decimated. The demographic makeup of San Diego and the locations in the county that the fire ripped through are also vastly different from that of New Orleans. Most of the hardest hit areas in San Diego county are inhabited by upper-middle class and upper class families in neighborhoods such as Rancho Santa Fe and Rancho Bernardo, and I am sure many of these people simply traveled closer to the coast and stayed in a hotel instead of utilizing the outreach programs organized by county officials. The people of New Orleans did what they needed to in order to survive in response to a lack of aid, attention, and really, compassion, whereas the people of San Diego sat in Qualcomm stadium, safe from danger, eating food from Pat and Oscars, with the eyes of the nation upon them. Still think San Diego and New Orleans are the same?

It made my blood boil to hear our government praising G-dub for his great work with assistance for the California wildfires, in fact, the only noticeable thing he did in my opinion was travel to an already strained area to take a helicopter tour of some burned homes and doll out a couple of hugs for a photo-op. His visit here on Thursday caused more harm than good as his presidential cavalcade tied up traffic on the freeway; traffic comprised of people heading back to see if their homes were still standing and firefighters trying to get to the station to get some rest and food.

While G-dub was smiling for the cameras and talking his patented brand of nonsense to the unfortunate residents that lost everything, FEMA was busy lying to America and staging a fake news conference patting themselves on the back for their wonderful response to the wildfires. As I mentioned earlier in this post, the people of San Diego had things completely under control and running like a well-oiled machine before the liars showed up, and this deceitful act by FEMA further reinforces my belief that we need to weed out government agencies and be more self-reliant as states. It just makes you wonder how many other things we are lied to about on a regular basis…

Curious coincidence that houses burned in areas where the housing market has tanked, foreclosures are at an all time high, and new construction is suffering.  San Diego is most definitely not New Orleans.