San Diego Fire and New Orleans Flood

It was my 30th birthday in 2003 and I was giddy from just having celebrated it by seeing one of the greatest rock bands of all time, Guided By Voices, play at a beach bar in San Diego. As my fiance picked my friend and I up from the show, ash was falling from the sky. In my euphoria over the show, I joked that the city of my birth had set itself on fire in honor of my turning 30.

The next day, the ash was worse, and news began to spread that much of East County was on fire, friends’ homes were being threatened and others were being lost. People were dying.

The following Monday, at work in La Jolla, miles away from the fire, I stepped outside and took a picture around 2 p.m. It looked like sepia tone.

My mother and I took a ride out to where the fire was a few months later and I found myself thinking something I would say to people about Katrina a few years later, “It’s hard to imagine the scope unless you see it.”

Now, it’s the same time of year, San Diego is burning once more. People are comparing it to Katrina.

The two events are much the same actually. Both happened before. Both are in disaster prone areas. Both prompted mass evacuations of hundreds of thousands of people.

One of the differences is detailed in this article:

Civility Reigns at San Diego Stadium

I tried to think of what the other differences might be. But the satirical site Fark.com figured it out for me, They headlined the article like this:

You simply get chills every time you see these evacuees – so many of these people, almost all of them that we see, are so rich and so white

I’m not going to come out and make any generalizations about these two evacuations. There are other differences. Qualcomm is in the middle of a suburban area and many miles of parking lots, subdivisions and communities stand between it and the fire. It isn’t threatened. The Superdome was surrounded by water, torn up and without power while all hell broke loose outside. The city of San Diego still has its infrastructure and chaos won’t descend on it.

So the two scenarios are different and don’t merit comparison so much.

But I do want to point something out.

This is the second time in four years that this particular area has been ablaze. So it isn’t a large leap in logic to say that they face the same situation many of us face here in New Orleans – their home is prone to disaster. Steps need to be taken to prevent such disaster to happen and every now and again, it may happen regardless.

The only question is, how many people will step forward in the midst of this disaster and make statements that these people deserved it for living there? How many people will advocate not rebuilding it? Who will suggest bulldozing all of San Diego County?

Nobody will. Because to suggest that would be inconceivable.

But for some reason, folks seem to think it is okay to do so with New Orleans.

Why?

Well, it comes down to, and I must say I am usually (for lack of a better word) conservative in my use of this word, but it’s simple racism.

I would like to ask the cretins who occupy my Enemies of the State list what their thoughts are on the situations in San Diego and New Orleans. I wonder why they advocate the forcing out of 1.5 million metro New Orleanians but suddenly become bashful if such an order is contemplated about rural San Diegans.

There is another difference between the regions though.

Money.

Not the cost of each threatened home but the cost of protecting the homes. A levee system would cost America 40 billion dollars. I’m not sure what improved fire protection would cost but it seems like less than that. So people probably don’t want to spend so much to save a city full of black folks and coon-asses. Nevermind the busiest port in North America.

I’d prefer it if neither region was forced to leave their home actually. I’d love to see Americans unite when disaster strikes like they did before the whole country become divided amongst greed and cynicism.

I also wish the best for my former neighbors in San Diego.