He won't say 'I told you so . . .'

[ellisonz]

Steve Lopez:
He won't say 'I told you so . . .'
October 24, 2007

Former San Diego fire Chief Jeff Bowman, who repeatedly warned that his city wasn't prepared to handle major fires, is out back of his house near Escondido at 7 a.m., watching the smoke come over a ridge and wondering if he'll lose everything he's got.

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There's no way to adequately staff for fires of this magnitude, Bowman says, and he doesn't want to turn so much scorched earth and misery into an I-told-you-so speech. But as we drive to get his mother, he can't help but go over some of the facts.

Although the city of San Diego has a fire department, the county doesn't, leaving many suburban and rural areas to rely on volunteer departments. The city has but one firefighting helicopter and just 975 firefighters for 330 square miles and 1.3 million residents.

Compare that, he says, with San Francisco, which has 1,600 firefighters for 60 square miles and 850,000 people.

----

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lopez24oct24,1,2517947.column?coll=la-util-news-local&ctrack=8&cset=true

:hide:

[Tesha]

1. Preparedness requires spending money (e.g., "taxes").

Preparedness requires spending money and the money
to be spent is usually raised in the form of taxes.

Californians, especially Republican Californians,
hate taxes and they've cut taxes radically over
the last few decades.

Unpreparedness for natiral disasters is one of
the unintended consequences of this action. NPR
reported that LA County has somethinglike ten
times the fire-fighting equipment (per capita?
per square mile? Didn't catch that) as San Diego
County.

Tesha

[ellisonz]

2. San Diego needs to get its shit together.

[ellisonz]

3. Kick.

[sandnsea]

4. More anti-government types

So California Republicans have more in common with southern Republicans than I thought. Pretty pathetic when one of the richest populations in the world won't pay for firefighting to protect themselves. What a bunch of dumbasses.

[TahitiNut]

5. To be fair, San Francisco DID burn to the ground 100 years ago.

Experience is a good teacher. :shrug: Epecially if liberals are doing the learning. :evilgrin:

Furthermore, evacuation of the city (and environs) is more like New Orleans than Sandi Ego.