A Burning Ring of Fire
- October 24th, 2007
When I was a kid, I thought Johnny Cash’s song, Ring of Fire, was about hemorrhoids. Don’t pretend that doesn’t make sense.
The county is still burning here, but it looks like we’re starting to get some relief from the winds and more front-lines aid. The maps don’t look as scary as yesterday, but the news says otherwise, claiming none of the fires are contained. I suppose that’s easy for me to say… all cozy on the couch in my apartment and not standing in the parking lot of Qualcomm Stadium, wondering what happened to my life. God, I really feel for those people. I can’t imagine what that must be like to see your entire life go up in flames. For those who made it out with their health, I guess that’s all you can hold on to… I am just so sorry for them.
Yesterday some fires sprung up to the south, so now we’ve got it coming from the north, south and east, forming almost a half-circle… I’m fortunately in a nice cubby of hillside development right in the middle of that circle along the water, so unless the dry brush in the canyon behind these hills sparks up, I’ll be just fine. The air is horrendous, though; you really can’t be outside longer than a couple minute at a time and the ash is beginning it’s soft decent like a blanket of snow over the city.
I have to say, I’m very impressed with our community. I love this city and this is a perfect example of why. Our community rose up to help, there are people volunteering left and right, bringing food by the stadium and other shelters, massage therapists and other holistic healers are turning out to help aid in the managing of stress (which sounds so “California”, but hey, what the hell?), they’ve found some entertainment for kids so they’re not as scared, people are donating blood (I went by yesterday to the blood drive in the Target parking lot, but was regrettably turned away for having a cold — I kind of think it’s just allergies to the air quality, but I know they can’t risk it) and friends, family, even strangers are opening their homes to people who need a place to stay. Every hotel in San Diego is booked solid and the evacuation stations are pushing their limits. It’s amazing. Sad, but uplifting at the same time.
I will say that I could do without the 24 hour news coverage on every network station in the city, though. Seriously, every station? 24 hours a day? No commercials? Nothing? Come on. It’s not like they’re giving us new information. They’re just rehashing the same info they told 20 minutes ago. Last night I turned it on and they were showing footage from the day and then just kind of standing around, waxing panicked about the horror. I realize that people need to know and we should totally be kept abreast of updates, but my god. Every. Single. Station. Non-stop for 3 days now.
That’s probably not very popular of an opinion, but it’s not like I don’t want to know what’s going on. I just don’t need to have it constantly in my face on repeat non-stop. Give me an update every 15 minutes. Hell, have a crawl if you want, but do I need to look at Carol LeBeau and the same burning carnage 24 hours a day? I am avoiding the local news and watching the coverage from outside the state, where it’s in a little more perspective and not working to give everyone in the city post-traumatic stress. I love our city and I love our people, but the news is wearing me out.
However, I am trying to remember that this is on a scale much larger than anything we’ve ever experienced here… at least since the Northridge Earthquakes, I think. We had Brian Wilson from NBC here last night comparing it to Katrina, saying it’s on a much larger scale, but while we may have more people displaced, I think it’s really apples and oranges. There’s no comparison, though it’s not stopped some people from saying, “Look at all the rich white people getting massages at the stadium. Sure is a far cry from Katrina!”, like our entire city is wall to wall rich whiteys. OK, it is, kind of… but not everyone is rich and a lot of people lost their homes, their livelihoods, their pets… these are two different disasters, horrible in their own right and I’d really rather not compare them.
Let’s keep things in perspective for now, shall we? We can politically mudsling when we have some containment.
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It really looks awful. I sit and watch from the east coast in amazement.
However I totally know what you mean about the coverage. Every time we go through a hurricane the news coverage gets out of control and sometimes, you just need to watch a rerun of Roseanne to keep your sanity.
Great, I will never hear that song again without thinking of hemorrhoids! Combine that with what I saw on Kathy’s Flickr steam earlier, and I’m going to be spending the rest of the night scrubbing my mind with bleach.
Glad you’re safe. It’s so heartbreaking to watch all those poor people sobbing on the news about losing everything.
@geeky: As I said, aren’t you happy you know us? haha!
i have to tell you the same thing i told mikey…
when they were evacuating north of us, you better believe i had that shit on 24/7.
i guess it all depends on how close you were to the fires? i was glad for the 24/7 coverage, because it let us know what was going on, so we’d have plenty of time to leave if we needed to. and it allowed me to keep tabs on areas where my friends and coworkers live, too.
fortunately, it changed direction and we didn’t need to. but the knowledge helped, for me at least.
but if i didn’t have cable and that was all i could watch, i might think differently. (even though, strangely enough, with all of the available channels, i kept it on local news all week.)
If it makes you feel any better, in Boston, the news coverage is like “There’s a fire in CA. The Sox have chosen Schilling to pitch in Game 2. Will Dice-K get a start? blah, blah, blah, Red Sox, Red Sox, Red Sox. 2 second update on fires in CA.”