SMOKE ‘N’ MIRRORS: SOCAL VS. N.O.

So I’ve spent the last couple days suckin’ in lovely SoCal fume-filled air. It’s like they moved my whole area to the inside of a used barbecue pit or something. Such is life in the valley, I guess. Fortunately, the winds are dying down enough to keep the flames from spreading too close to home; the result has been just bad air, ashe and bad nerves.

But even with all the smoke and soot in the air, I’ve seen plenty of BS floating around. Let’s start with these nonsensical, bullcrap comparisons to Katrina:

STREETS IS WATCHIN’ Cali media are so star-struck and wealth-obsessed it’s disgusting. The main reason the fires got any courage in the first place was because of first residence to go up: The Kasdan Castle. It’s a $20 million castle on a hilltop in Malibu. Since the fires were basically wild brush fires, they just hit her house ‘cuz it was in the way. Now Lily Lawrence, the lady who lived there is known as “The Princess” because well, it’s a castle, she’s a rich socialite, and the Cali media are groupie-fied enough to call rich white women “princesses” for no reason at all. Anyway, her house was cooked by late Sunday afternoon.

While the media were busy talking about her lost Faberge eggs and Elvis connections, it slowly dawned on them that they’re called “wildfires” for a reason—they burn wild all over the place—and Malibu was starting to roast. That’s when they decided to stop paparazzin’ around and tried to do some real reporting.

Nationally, from CNN to MSNBC to FOX to the (not so) Big Three (i.e. CBS, NBC, ABC) reporters are seemingly going out of their way to contrast to the wildfires with the hurricane victims when these communities and disasters couldn’t have less in common. It’s as if they’re taking a page out of Bill Cosby’s book and trying to say: “See you poor (mostly) black people, this is how you handle adversity. Act like these white folks and you’ll be fine.”

WHERE’D ALL THE REFUGEES GO? I’m a couple hours or so north of San Diego. Been down there quite a bit. Qualcomm stadium, home of the San Diego Chargers is being used as a shelter for evacuees—not “refugees,” but “evacuees.” Also, unlike Katrina, with all its poor brown and black faces, nobody in the press, not anchors, not reporters are calling these nice—mostly white, largely upper-class—people “refugees”. But fire or no fire, they have residences; they are citizens. Like the stupid, needlessly jingoistic Chevy commercial says, “This is our country.”

GIMME SHELTER! First off, unlike the Superdome with its Katrina victims, not only is Qualcomm Stadium a much newer facility than the Superdome; in fact, the Superdome was so old that the New Orleans Saints were angling for a new stadium even prior to the hurricane. More importantly QC is not even a third filled with evacuees while the Superdome was over capacity after the first day. Also, the SD Fires have coincided with football season so Qualcomm was already up and running and able to handle an influx of people; while the Superdome was actually still in off-season mode, which meant few concession supplies, working plumping etc. were available and consequently the Superdome was even less prepared for an event of any sort, nevermind it being used as a disaster shelter.

NUTHIN’ BUT A PARTY, Y’ALL? Acupuncture. Massage tables. Yoga. Meditation classes for adults. Games and finger painting for kids. Free food and snacks. Grief counselors. Loan officers and Insurance agents onsite. AT&T provided Internet access to the evacuees and charged their cell phones for free...

If you listen to the reporters, they’re making Qualcomm sound like the LA County Fair (which I hit for the first time this year)—all that’s missing is are FEMA trailers serving up deep-fried Coca-Cola and government-sponsored P-Funk show. Somebody needs to scalp tickets for this one.

“It’s so organized! It’s so clean and orderly... People are so nice and friendly.” Can't tell you how many times I've heard these sentiments. Media Reporters found the nicest cleanest, calmest and most “camera-friendly” people possible for interviews. Even the first responders on the scene at Qualcomm look like they went thru Berry Gordy’s old Finishing School or something. And not more than 90 seconds of coverage goes by without someone saying, “This so different from Katrina.”

Yeah, very different from Katrina...

HERE COMES THE CAVALRY! My new senator, Barbara Boxer gave a nice condescending speech from outside Qualcomm praising everyone for making this experience, “so much better than Katrina” and promising to make sure everyone gets everything they need to pull thru. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has given similar speeches from various hotspots already comforting fire victims. Even George Bush and Michael Chertoff, that creepy Skeletor-lookin’ guy from Homeland Security have made soothe-saying CYA speeches claiming to be on top of things.

That’s pretty easy to do given the actual nature of things.

NATURE OF THE THREAT It’s hard to minimized $1 Billion in damage and over 450,000 acres being burned to the ground, but if could’ve gone any better than this somebody show me. For starters, in an attempt to compare this to Katrina what’s been overlooked is that at 75% or more of what’s been burned are not homes, not roads, not commercial buildings but trees and unoccupied lands. (It's the remaining 25% of burn that's caused the evacuations and heartaches and damage.)

As for bodies, so far there are between 1-3 dead depending on which tally you accept. Now one person dead is one too many; but we’re talking one, maximum 3 fire-related deaths so far. When half a million acres go up in smoke and maybe 3 dead bodies is the extent of the carnage? You for real. Conversely, they’re still counting bodies of hurricane victims in the Gulf Coast. As for injuries, estimates are running as high as 50 additional non-life threatening fire-related injuries, some of those are connected to firefighters.

Not to make light of this but when USC throws its next all-night kegger, you’re liable to pile up more bodies from alcohol poisoning.

Why the Disparity?

Coastal Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama were smashed by floods, hurricanes, and 150mph winds carrying everything from cars, chunks of houses and trees for an entire weekend straight. SoCal just got hit by raging fires. I say “just” because out here, with the exception of the “5” which was closed largely for traffic jams, none of our major freeways and roads got burned which meant most of the people who wanted to get out by car were able to. And because the roads were never damaged supplies and resources have been able to get in and out (albeit slowly).

THE FIRES HAVE BEEN LARGELY RESIDENTIAL.

Most of the buildings that have burned have been homes; this means evacuees have had places to go—churches are intact, schools are intact, hospitals and homeless shelters are able to help; grocery stores, public buildings, jails, retailers, and all the structures that normally keep a town/community going were—by and large—untouched by the fires and therefore able to open their doors and resources. During Katrina, everyone and everything got hit across the board within hours, and in some cases minutes.

Also, there’s a difference between “evacuees” and “homeless”. Many of the residents have been forced to leave their homes to avoid smoke inhalation and for precautionary reasons, but their homes and property are actually fine. That’s totally different from “Head for the hills cuz 20,000ft of water is coming up our block like it or not!”

PUBLIC WORKS STAYED WORKING. As bad as the fires have been, with few exceptions they haven’t burned communal arteries like plumbing, telephone lines, electrical lines or power stations, sanitation systems, gas lines/gas stations, etc. All that stuff is working so people haven’t had reason to panic in mass numbers.

911 ISN’T A JOKE. Not sure if this is a national service or not, but they do something out here called “reverse 9/11” where thousands of residents were called by 9-11 at home and told to evacuate. Imagine the cops calling you for help. (Can you imagine how many lives that would’ve saved in the gulf had that been in effect down there, especially given the lack of transportation?) Lastly, SoCal is a wealthier, driver-centric community. What that’s meant out here is way more people have cars and were ready to go when the time came.

And lastly, because the fires were just random enough not to hit every home and dodge major retail outlets, people have been able to fend for themselves. People have been able to drive to grocery stores, go to malls, etc. Volunteer orgs have been able to get supplies because the supply sources haven’t been destroyed.

DIFFERENT STROKES FOR DIFFERENT FOLKS, right?

Like I said, I'm a new resident to SoCal—7 months and counting. People out here in the valley treat fires and earthquakes like I used to treat gunfire and blizzards back in Chi-town—it sucks but it comes with the territory.

And yeah, the country learned a little bit from Katrina—not enough to help those most affected/still affected by the gulf tragedy. (Far as i'm concerned Michael Brown and several local officials out to be in jail along with some insurance agents for what they put those folks thru, but that's just me...) But anyway...

All I know is something's not right in the way this country deals with disasters and tragedies. Never has been.

I had relatives in Mississippi when Katrina jumped off, yet once you got north of downtown Chicago where I lived, folks were more concerned with whether or not Kerry Wood and Mark Prior would be healthy enough to finish the season and who the Bears QB was gonna be than they were with what was going on in the gulf.

This is just another reminder that it really comes down to who you are and where you are... Depends on the news cycle, your race, your class, your region, whether or not it's an election year... Everything but whether or not you need help is what determines how you'll get treated in a disaster. And that's a disaster in and of itself.