molti fuochi

many fires.
living in san diego is supposed to be a dream. people forget however, that mother nature has the final say. while many people just think of the beach, the sun, and the weather when the think of san diego, they should also remember earthquakes, and our most recent tragedy, fire. one might think that after the fires in 2003, that lessons would have been learned and that the county as a whole would be better prepared. in some cases this was true, however in other areas it could have been much better than the actual situation turned out. the good is the fact that communication was much better this time around and that people were evacuated before the fire got there so if the house couldnt be saved, at least human lives could be. however, communication can also be improved between the government and the military. the military was ready to assist, and no one asked them to. we could have had their fire fighting copters and planes in the air on tuesday, but only the navy was asked. i want to know why. i also want to know why it took so long to get help. another thing that bothered me happened today. the good old president came to tour the area and make speeches about giving us aid. while he was making this speech, he has about 50-75 firemen standing behind him. i feel that they should either have been out there fighting the fire or resting after fighting the fires for however many hours they were out there. they did not need to be involved in the presidents photo op. that kind of thing is disrespectful to me, and i wish it hadnt been done. on another note, the fire did get scarily close to me. it was about 5 miles away at the closest point. the worst day was monday, and at one point, the sky got really orange and you just knew it wasnt going well. the fire was contained though, and our focus for fear switched to the big fire that as of yet, is just shy of burning 200,000 acres. over 500,000 people were evacuated, more than were evacuated cue to hurricane katrina. this has just been a huge disaster, and i hope that we can recover from it, because san diego is one of the best places in the world to live, regardless of the earthquakes and fires. :)