Friends of mine lost their house. They managed to save some sentimental stuff but everything they couldn’t grab quickly is gone.
I have a friend who used to live in Santa Rosa, moved to a suburb of Sacramento a few years ago, but her house in SR burned down, and she’s as upset as if she stilled lived there. She and her son will be taking relief supplies up there in a couple of days. Remind me again what it was the CIC said about the devastation?
Not much. I think this’ll be a pattern with blue-state disasters. They’ll be second-class disasters, regrettable in a dry-eyed way and about which little can be done, these things happen, etc.
“Have fun!”
We returned home today despite the fact that there was a new and very bad fire close to our fire-prone little hill. But the good news is that the depth and breadth of firefighters and equipment increased many thousand times over, and the big tanker aircraft and copters were lined up dousing and tamping down. We are still not out of the woods, but containment is encouraging. We are (so far) incredibly lucky……many friends and acquaintances did not fare so well. The work of recovery will begin soon. Deepest gratitude to all of the men and women who worked so hard to keep us as safe as possible.
I’m happy to know you’re home again because there is no place like it, and so gratified to know there are firefighters and others doing the hard work on behalf of all us in California.
From a SF Chronicle Editorial:
"How many times has Trump tweeted about the fires since they were whipped into life-threatening force early Monday: zero.
Among the subjects that merited a Trump tweet since then (with some paraphrasing)
— The NFL anthem issue […]
— A threat to revoke the licenses of broadcast networks that have become too "partisan […]
—A promotion for his interview with Sean Hannity
— Praise for a flattering new book about him
— A false claim about the NFL getting tax breaks
— A boast: "Nobody could have done what I’ve done for Puerto Rico with so little appreciation
—More self congratulation about some stupid flattering statement from Lou Dobbs
40 deaths so far, with many still unaccounted for, and unbelievable loss, all on American soil, and barely a word from Moron-in-chief about it.
Sheesh, what an asshole piece of shit crap subhuman jerk sits in our WH (<——these are my words, of course, not the Chronicle’s)
Long ago I fought fires (three seasons) on a hot-shot crew. It’s hard, sometimes dangerous, work. But even then, with encroaching bark-beetle infestations and changing deforestation patterns such as Gobi dust showing up in April, we knew that climate change was coming. What struck me about this article is that it could have been written 100 years ago (“rebuilding their lives”), even if it is clear that restoration over the short run is not possible. Thank god, at least that the AP writer did not go with the “most of the grapes are already picked” narrative. What we have is mitigation and adaptation to climate change effects. With such an insult to a crown jewel microclimate and dozens of deaths, the AP writer does a disservice by not mentioning the hard choices Californians face as natural systems evolved over millions of years are put under sudden, increasing stress. As I learned in the Lofoten Islands, the global current system is collapsing, and those currents indirectly, are a big reason for the favorable climate in Sonoma. Maybe this all works like Harvey Weinstein; we ignore the problem for decades until things all fall apart then wide outrage about why nobody came forward sooner with information. In Trump’s immortal words: “Nobody knew.”