These are questions that the people of Los Angeles need to remember when it comes time to vote the next time around and while I am sure the media will do everything in their power to push blame on something else and to bury this story I think the real tragedy here is that something so crazy as the fire department not having water to actually fire-fight, is just inexcusable. I see the various politicians on TV trying to handle this and most of it is pretty embarrassing to see because come on now, all of these people are full of doodoo.
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That's a satellite image and man, that just looks like something from a war or a movie about an apocalypse or something... not one of the most recognized cities in the world.
I don't recall where I heard it but there was a podcaster that was talking about how Los Angeles was a ticking time bomb as far as fires were concerned and all that was necessary for devastation was the right kind of winds and there would be nothing the city would be able to do in order to stop it.
I haven't been seriously following anything that is going on because I feel as though this will sort itself out just like the flooding in North Carolina a while ago did. I do feel like there is a very real difference though because having something like a reliable water source for fire fighters to actually do their jobs seems like that would be a major priority for the LAFD. How did this fail so badly? I've seen a few stories online that are heartbreaking about older people having their entire lives wiped out because the blaze couldn't be contained.
Are you outraged yet California? You pay some of the highest taxes in the US and when a disaster like this comes along the people that you have been paying to protect you are incapable of doing so because they don't have water!
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This article kind of annoyed me because ok, we have an out of control blaze doing on and NPR probably scrambled to figure out how they can use this disaster to push some sort of political agenda. Oh ok, Latino immigrants helped out, I guess we will pull back on the deportation stuff then.
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The entire article is about Maria Garcia, who they point out as being an "undocumented immigrant" and how she got up early in the morning to go and help put out fires. Sure Maria, that garden hose is saving the day big time and definitely wasn't staged for the sake of this article.
I'll leave that alone before I'll ruffle too many feathers.
This colossal failure on the part of a government to do the one and only job that they had is just another showcase in how anything the government is tasked with doing they are going to do incorrectly. In this particular situation, the one thing they definitely needed to help mitigate this disaster was water, and how the hell did the not have access to that? Well, I wouldn't plan on ever getting a real answer to that.
I feel bad for the people that are badly affected by this the same way that I did feel bad for the people that had their lives wiped out by flooding in North Carolina. This is a problem that continues to this day and I think LA is going to experience the same. The thing is though, are the people going to actually learn anything from it or are they going to continue to do what it was that got them to this point in the first place?
It will be interesting to see if FEMA has any money for this. That'll perk some ears up I think.