zoobyshoe said:
Yeah, they shouldn't compare us to them: the city, itself, was flooded, and everyone was devastated there. Here most of the population is perfectly fine and in a position to help the evacuees with donations, which people have been doing with enormous speed and generosity. In New Orleans, and the general area hit by Katrina, there wasn't anyone in a good enough position to help anyone else.
I completely agree, and that's been bugging me with the comparisons on the news as well. Even the folks "camping out" at Qualcomm Arena are in a completely different situation than those who were taking refuge at the SuperDome in N.O. At Qualcomm, there is no immediate threat in the nearby area. People are free to come and go...that includes both volunteers and those who are using it as a shelter. If things get too crowded, you can go outside and take a walk. If you need some supplies, or want something other than what's being offered there, you can head to surrounding businesses and get what you want...they're all still open for business. Qualcomm is an area of safety for the evacuees. With Katrina, the people taking shelter at the SuperDome were literally trapped inside once the hurricane started, and the surrounding area was boarded up, also evacuated, and turned to a ghost town. There wasn't even any feeling of safety there, since they were watching sections of the roof blow off the stadium and the rain coming pouring into the areas they were trying to shelter. The people there weren't just worrying about their property, they were still fearing for their lives. And, when the storm was over, not only did they not have homes to go back to, they had no city to even support them. No businesses were open, their jobs were gone, and everyone in the entire city was in the same boat with them.
Granted, there may have been some lessons learned from Katrina that have helped here, but trying to make comparisons is pretty unfair, and it bugs me when they're all stumping about how well CA is handling the situation compared with N.O., or how much they've learned from Katrina to make things so much better now. When I see a similar scenario as Katrina, then I'll believe they've learned something or not. Plus, much of CA's preparation had nothing to do with Katrina, but in response to lessons learned from the 2003 fires.
Plus, while the total number of evacuees is high, that was phased over a week of evacuations, not a single day. The much-touted reverse 911 system probably wouldn't have worked in N.O...once the phone lines went down, those calls weren't going to go through. The only way the situation would be similar is if the fires encroached upon the city proper, fully surrounding it and blocking all the main roads out, and knocking out the power grid, before starting to burn it down.
But, the fires aren't even out yet, and the media is already getting hypercritical of CA's handling of these fires too. It sounds to me like they handled it very well, but the media is finding things to nitpick about. You can't be prepared for every single event in a disaster situation, because they're all different, and some decisions need to be made quickly without much time to think through all the possible consequences or options. Even worse, much of what the media is criticizing, it seems the alternative probably would have just made things worse...such as having additional aircraft in a crowded airspace on a different frequency from the aircraft of those trained to respond to fires, and the additional aircraft containing crews not even trained to fight these types of fires, so more likely to get in the way, or dump water in the wrong places and cause more damage to unaffected areas, than to really help. They're griping that we'd let these members of the military go to Iraq, but not fight a fire...yeah, because they're trained for Iraq, they're not trained for fighting wildfires.
