State of Emergency.

October 22, 2007

Wildfires rage in Southern Calif. - Yahoo! News

Most everyone has heard about the latest CA wildfires. I’ve been reading about them all weekend, marveling at how some of the press only wrote about the celebrities who live in Malibu, and the many rehabs, rather than the extent of the damage. I didn’t know until this morning that the wildfires had spread beyond Malibu and that’s very disheartening. I can’t remember the last time we had so many devastating wildfires in a single year.

Our Tahoe trip in August landed only a few days after the majority of the fires has been contained. Devin and I drove up much later than the rest of the family and, just as we were nearing Truckee, we were distracted by some strange lights off the side of the road. Then we realized that lights don’t move and, as we got closer, it was obvious that it was a fire, and that it was alarmingly close to the highway.

When we met up with the family at the condo in Tahoe, they asked us if we had any trouble driving since the highway had been closed off down by Truckee because of the fires. It had only been re-opened for less than an hour by the time we got there and Devin I were surprised that it had been re-opened at all since the fires were practically kissing the road.

A few days later, Devin’s brother Ryan decided to drive us around his neighborhood and give us a tour of charred homes. We stopped in front of a group of homes that were completely gone, and Ryan told us about how he’d been hanging out with his friend at his home (he gestured towards one of the blackened piles of rubble) before heading off to work and less than forty minutes after Ryan left his friend, the friend’s house was burned to the ground. Along with many of the homes surrounding it. I started crying a bit, and silently berated myself for being such a wimp until I remembered that there is nothing wrong with crying over such loss, even though I’ve lost nothing.

We’ve had a rough year in California. Governor Schwarzenegger (that is always going to sound strange to me) has declared a State of Emergency 18 times this year, already two more than last year. In October alone, we’ve had three States of Emergency. There was the landslide in San Diego, the I-5 truck tunnel collision and now more fires.

You can see the list of all State of Emergency Declarations from Nov. 2003 to the present (although they don’t have the latest fire one up, yet) here. The area I live in was responsible for most of the Freeze emergencies, although out of the five of them in January, I’m not sure how many were directly related to the Central Valley.

The list is fairly interesting. Last year was plagued with floods, the same way this year has been plagued with fires. There was also an Emergency Prison Overcrowding situation that I’d forgotten about and two Fish Emergencies, as well.

My poor, beleaguered state. Maybe the rest of the year will be relatively calm, since California is a fantastic place to live and I’m tired of seeing it besieged with disasters.

Posted in Dispatch