Today in Southern California a series of wildfires either deliberately set, or caused by other "natural causes" (if, as one reporter proclaimed, a "downed power line" is a natural cause...)
(Very strong "Santa Ana" winds, a reverse weather phenomenom that causes adiabatically heated and dried air to be sent at hurricane speeds down canyons) are a huge contributor to the fires, and do cause power lines to fall as well!)
Republicans, such as Arnold and President Bush, are concerned about the people getting all that they need during the disaster.
"Emergency Management - Bring It On!"
(Sounds like socialism to me, like government roads, schools, MediCal, MediCare, Social Security, secure borders, etc.)
Once upon a time I wrote a disaster scenario to represent everything that could happen to a populace in one paragraph.
It was part of a software demonstration from Cliffside Software, a company my brother and I started (and finished!).
I'll replicate it herewith, after you read the real life scenario as it appeared today!
Here are a series of sentences that sum it up...weird stuff happens in a disaster...
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A 1,049-inmate jail in Orange County was evacuated because of heavy smoke. The prisoners were bused to other lockups.
In San Diego County, where at least four fires burned, more than 200,000 reverse 911 calls — calls from county officials to residents — alerted residents to evacuations, said County Supervisor Roberts.
About 10,000 of them ended up at Qualcomm Stadium, home to the NFL's Chargers, where thousands of people huddled in eerie silence during the day Monday, staring at muted TV news reports of the wildfires. A lone concession stand served coffee and doughnuts. Many gathered in the
parking lot with their pets, which were banned from the stadium.
"The flames were like 100 feet high and it moved up the hill in seconds. It was at the bottom, it was in the middle, and then it was at the top," said Steve Jarrett, who helped a friend evacuate his home in nearby Escondido.
Fire near the San Diego Wild Animal Park led authorities to move condors, a cheetah, snakes and other animals to the fire-resistant veterinary hospital on the grounds of the park. The large animals, such as elephants, rhinos and antelope, were left in irrigated enclosures.
Flames forced the evacuation of the San Diego community of Ramona, which has a population of about 36,000.
As flames, thick smoke and choking ash filled the air around San Diego County's Lake Hodges, Stan Smith ignored orders to evacuate and stayed behind to help rescue the horses of his neighbor Ken Morris.
"It's hard to leave all your belongings and take off, and the bad thing is you can't get back in once you leave," Smith said. "I heard the cops come by, and I just ducked," Morris said.
Besides, said Smith, "Lots of time the fire doesn't ever come. It's come really close before. I've seen it so bad you couldn't even hear yourself talk over the flames and ash blowing everywhere."
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I'll wager Smith has seen his share of "ash blowing everywhere"!
Here's what I wrote (circa 1996).
PlanAHEAD remains the world's only generalized contingency exercise development tool and is used to script training sessions to allow decision makers to learn how to overcome all of this and more:
Mutual Aid Pacts were activated by the time the torrential rain started and the tornado had just about roped out when the school bus stalled over the railroad tracks right next to the gasoline tank farm and the children's cries drowned out the noise of the flash flood, which washed away the cemetary, sending caskets into the river, threatening the dam and not playing havoc with the computer systems like the electro-magnetic pulse from the nuclear explosion which put a crimp in the power to the city, and the computer data network was badly affected by the sun spots, while the civil disturbance went into its second week with the nursing home hostages being released just one at a time, and only if they help save the health care workers from their plane's wreckage, which is still smoldering at the recently crowded stadium (now a temporary morgue), and the fuel which hadn't already burned is pouring into the storm drains, barely affecting the President and First Lady who made a surprise visit, so almost nobody noticed the earthquake, except those EOC members still trapped in the grain silo with the virus wielding band of bio-hazard terrorists.
The media, with live TV feeds just outside the EOC, blames your organization.
Just had to share.
Good luck with the disaster, wherever you are!
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