In a flash:
That’s Coffey Park. One neighborhood in Santa Rosa that along with several others in Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino, and Lake Counties that were in the path of multiple wildfires in early October 2017. The latest Tubbs Fire estimate is that 4,658 homes were destroyed.
The most damaging period of the wildfires began at 1:00 am and raged through 4:30 am on October 9. Firefighters and police could do no more in those hours than sound alarms to get the people out of the areas under imminent danger. Thirty-five to forty are known not to have made it out in those early morning hours. (A week later more than 34,000 people remained under evacuation)
Almost all gone before daybreak on October 9.
As the fires raged on that day and for the next two weeks, the emergency response management and resources — local, mutual-aid from surrounding cities and counties, and the state (principally CalFire) — kicked into high gear during the first hours and higher gear over the next few days. By that first evening, shelter, food, and water had materialized in sufficient size to care for all the evacuees. If they had a way of obtaining the information.
Internet, cable TV, and cell phone coverage mostly went down that first morning. The primary information source became local am radio. How fortunate we were that a media conglomerate (ie Bain Capital, etc.) has yet to take over this community’s airwaves. Otherwise, a computer from some distant location would have continued piping in the same crap they do everyday.
KSRO and KZST are locally owned and employ local on-air talent. People that could immediately shift from their standard format to become information dissemination and clearing houses.* (I’m giving props to KZST personnel that stayed on the job but equipment losses were too heavy for them to function as well as KSRO did.) Heather Black and Steve Jaxon along with their producers deserve special mention.
That was the primary means for local officials and officeholders to communicate with the people. They too were on the job in those early hours. Under the circumstances, all of them were good enough, some were better than good enough, and two stood out as phenomenally good public employees.
Not to overlook or dismiss those that also did a fine job, what follows is my scoring of many officials under an emergency situation.
Good Enough:
Jerry Brown, Governor of California
Sonoma County Supervisors
Hank Schreeder, Santa Rosa Chief of Police
Chris Coursey, Mayor of Santa Rosa
Jill Ravitch, Sonoma County District Attorney
Better than good:
Tony Gossner, Santa Rosa Fire Department Chief
Cal Fire spokespersons
Exceptional:
Rob Giordano, Sonoma County Sheriff
Mike McGuire, California State Senate, 2nd District
Girodano is a long-term employee of the Sonoma Sheriff’s Department. In August 2017 the Board of Supervisors appointed him interim Sheriff. He has no intention to run for Sheriff in the election next year. What made him great is that actively collected every shred of information he could possibly get and communicated all of it as quickly and thoroughly as possible. IOW, he satisfied all the criteria for a leader.
On October 18, Sonoma Sheriff Rips Immigration Official’s Statement On Arson Arrest.
The sheriff of a county devastated by some of the worst wildfires the region has seen has issued a scathing statement after a statement from federal immigration officials.
Sonoma County Sheriff Rob Giordano called the Immigration and Customs Enforcement statement “inaccurate [and] inflammatory.”
Tough enough to take on Trump’s ICE Acting Director AND Sheriff Refutes Breitbart Report Linking Wine Country Fires To Illegal Immigrant. Pow-Pow.
My assessment of Girodano’s performance during the disaster isn’t unique. A very good chance that he may find himself drafted to run for Sheriff.
McGuire was out in the field and on the road assessing the situation from early Monday morning. Area wise, SD02 is huge and includes much of the area impacted by the fires. (His colleague Bill Dodd SD03 represents other impacted areas. Have to assume that he too was on the job but I have no recollection of hearing from him.)
McGuire demonstrated that he really knows his district. Who’s who, what’s what, and how to go on from here. The 2015 Valley Fire was in his district and recovering from that is an ongoing effort. He’s an authentic, roll-up his sleeves politician. Not a privileged, Ivy League entitled politician in the biz to feather his own nest. He’s climbing a political ladder one rung at a time and learning his stuff. Impressive and refreshing. So unlike so many House Reps, Senators, Governors, and that thing in the White House.
The Sis, who doesn’t live in McGuire’s district and isn’t particularly political, is ready to knock on doors for McGuire when he runs for a statewide office. Next year the challenge will be to boost him up from his 2014 vote share of 70% in his re-election, assuming that anyone will bother to run against him.
(There’s more, much more, about the responses to this disaster that rightly should be shared. As heartbreaking as the destruction was, the response from every quarter was excellent. The disaster wasn’t compounded by a disastrous response which is more the norm. It was so good that we avoided having Trump come here and try to exploit the disaster for his own reputation.)
*By comparison, the local public radio station was worthless. Some of the NPR high priced talent may helicopter in and put together a very important story on it someday when it’s convenient and easy to do. Public broadcasting in the US is nothing like what was promised when initially funded out of the public purse.
You write:
Public broadcasting in the US is now nothing other than a neo-whatever shill for the centrist Dems and a disperser of old news and washed-up culture.
Middle-aged and showing it. Aimed almost exclusively at middle-aged and older white middle classsers. Unwatchable and…in the case of NPR…unlistenable. The self-satisfied smarm that oozes out the my car radio until I am forced to turn it off is one of the things that makes me think Donna Brazile might be onto something.
More:
I am not exactly a Brazile fan, but really…she pins the whole white millennial technonerd leftiness thing here. I see it everywhere there is rampant gentrification in NYC. I see it in the clubs where I play. I see it on the street. Except for the drunken college party kids on the Lower East Side and around NYU, there is no “there” there. And…as Ms. Brazile said:
“I didn’t sense much fun or [having sex] in Brooklyn.”
Me neither.
Not in the Brooklyn or Queens gentrified neighborhoods. Not in the so-called “New Harlem,” either. I saw the same thing a couple of weeks ago in the once predominantly black Roxbury area in Boston. I lived on St. Botolph St. in the ’60s. It was poor, but it was also hoppin’ and poppin’.
Now?
Sedate to a fault.
Bet on it.
Too busy taking photos of their overpriced, overwrought restaurant food and working out so they can wear their skinny jeans and ridiculous tight suits.
Sigh…
Not the people to be building a mass movement, to say the least.
AG
Off-topic for this diary, but sometimes we all get on a roll.
That excerpt from Brazile’s book indicates to me that she’d more astute than she usually appears to be. Of course, one need not have visited the HRC HQs to see the lack of enthusiasm for her. Bernie (and to a lesser extent, Trump) were drawing huge and raucous audiences; whereas Hillary’s rallies were small and sedate.
PBS and NPR have been nationalized and corporatized. Fascinating that local commercial media leaves local PBS/NPR in the dust when it comes to local news and information. It was a real lifeline during the first three days of this disaster — but unlike so many, I never lost power. (Should also mention that KZST sponsors the performance of local bands at the summer weekly market.)
>>That excerpt from Brazile’s book indicates to me that she’d more astute than she usually appears to be.
That bit sounds like she was seeing clearly.
But the various excerpts that I’ve seen quoted don’t add up to a consistent, honest POV on anything. She’s giving us a combination of truth, stuff one side or another wants to believe, and pure spin. I’m not sure anything written by any political insider is different though. Or ever has been.
A “4” for the following sentence:
<bnlcockquote>She’s giving us a combination of truth, stuff one side or another wants to believe, and pure spin. I’m not sure anything written by any political insider is different though. Or ever has been.
Perfect.
AG
I’ll second what AG said.
Sorry about the off-topicality.
I must admit though…I rarely notice it when I write stuff and comments are made, and I myself have a hard time telling what is “off-topic” and…as long as it pertains to some part of the post…simply a valid tangent. It never bothers me unless it is so off-topic that it pertains to absolutely nothing above.
If the universe is a gestalt…what does “off topic” really mean?
Where does one thing end and another begin?
Damned if I can tell, most of the time…
AG
Ah — I said it was understandable and okay. At a meta-meta-level, not too much difference between a destructive firestorm and Donna Brazile.
Like I said…just different (but similar in their deleterious effects) parts of the universal gestalt.
Aye.
AG
Given how ballistic the Clinton camp has gone over revelations that straddle the line between them and the whole truth, I would no longer rule out anything from them in response to a whole-truth-teller. No wonder the real DNC and Podesta email snatchers (my guess that it wasn’t one actor or even one entity) aren’t about to reveal themselves.
interesting, thanks.
I hope that as implied you came out ok.
The impact on people and the north bay economy is bound to be huge. The most interesting political impact might be if PG&E can be held responsible as so many are talking about.
does Sonoma State have a radio station? College stations, where they exist, have real local people. I can hear 3.
Comcast was totally down (cable, internet, phone) for days.
Yes, okay. Two of the evacuation zones never got less than two miles from me.
There were multiple fires that started almost simultaneously — not are rare as people think. That suggests that PG&E will be in the clear.
While it’s going to take years to recover, these properties were heavily insured and the insurance companies aren’t going to screw around with the policy holders. Within 48 hours, Farmers Insurance hauled in a tracker trailer to facilitate claims processing. Insurance company contact numbers were announced on radio and the newspaper by the second day. The other major insurers had their mobile claims processing trailers here by the end of the week.
A one-stop assistance operation — FEMA, DMV, insurers — was opened before the end of the week.
Restoring electricity and gas was difficult for areas near the site of the original destruction but most if not all of up was back by late Friday or early Saturday. Outages may have been longer in the corridor between Santa Rosa and Sonoma which remained evacuated because fires continued to burn on both sides of that area for another week. Fortunately, few additional houses/structures were lost during that time because there were massive numbers of firefighters from departments all over the state and Nevada, Oregon, and iirc Washington. (The community rallied around those firefighters with food, water, and lots of cheers for their efforts.)
This is what a recovery effort should look like. (Even the freaking Red Cross had its act together here.) Not the horror that people in New Orleans and Puerto Rico were and are being subjected to.
You write:
I am going to guess that the average financial worth of the individuals who live in the fire zone and the average financial worth of the individuals who live in PR and New Orleans are miles apart, as are the overall property values. I’ll also guess that the average skin color in the fire zone is several shades of pale greater than the overall brownishness one finds in PR and New Orleans.
(Urban Italian-American ghetto wisdom.)
(African-American wisdom…from everyplace.)
Institutionalized, monetized racism in action.
AG
PBS is definitely not a “neo-whatever shill for the centrist Dems.” It’s a whatever shill for the neo-centrist Dems. You misplaced the neo, and I, a proud, card-carrying member of the Neo-Centrist Democratic cabal, insist upon both a correction and an apology.
Sorry, that was for Arfur Gilroy.
Neglected to include that a North Bay Fire Relief Fund was set up within a few days:
Total raised donations to date: $19,856,071.
Another feather in McGuire’s cap. (FWIW I’ve been a member of this CU since 1977 — back when it was a limited to accepting deposits for savings accounts and making auto and personal loans.)