Reacting to the Unexpected
The devastating fires in California and the loss sustained by citizens is bad enough; what we have seen from elected officials there—not only in response, but actions taken in advance that made the situation worse—is a different sort of tragedy.
Natural disasters cannot be prevented, or stopped. But if you know a blizzard is forecast, you make sure you have gas for the snow blower, charge up your phones and devices, and figure out a heat source if the power goes out. If a tornado is headed your way, you gather your go-bag of important items and make sure you and yours are in a safe place. We used to live on the river, so you make plans for when the water rises to a certain level, including what to do if there’s an evacuation order.
Then, after the bad stuff happens, you look to government to fill the gaps based on their experience and planning. You rely first on yourself and your ability to recover, but you also expect government to at the very least have your back.
To learn that money was allocated for building reservoirs in California, but none were built while others sat empty while water from rainfall was diverted back to the Pacific Ocean…to learn that funding for fighting fires was cut during what was then a drought where the likelihood of massive fires was even greater than normal…to learn that public officials had no plan for staffing a massive evacuation…to learn that public officials were out of the country or unavailable despite a solid forecast such a fire was certain—well, all that is hard to comprehend.
And that’s all without even considering whether certain hires were simply to check boxes and fill quotas, as opposed to being made on merit.
Now the nation will suffer—insurance losses will put some companies out of business, premiums will go up for everyone to cover those losses, the federal government is pledging to pay unknown billions—all because a bad situation was made exponentially worse due to incompetence on the part of those citizens rely on.
And as always, the fault is not with those on the frontline…it’s with those who elbow each other for space at a news conference podium, the ones who made the jobs of those on the frontline much harder.
This is a generational loss. The fallout could also be generational, starting with the next election. Time for that later, of course; now, let’s hope the crisis ends and the rebuilding of lives begins sooner than later.
