Well, the people living in the hills outside Santa Cruz might not agree.
When I lived in New Jersey, there were fairly regular snowstorms - not nearly as bad as a fire, but some idiots got themselves killed for not knowing how to drive. Here we only get disasters infrequently, but when they come they are doozies.
I guess if you consider Santa Cruz the SF area, you’d be right. I don’t, any more than I consider Sacramento the SF area. When I said I feel safer here, I meant “here” as in San Francisco/Oakland/Berkeley.
Anyone who stays behind to hose their roof down during a massive fire is stupid and suicidal. Hosing down the roof can reduce the water pressure needed by firefighters, and it may not help anyway. I’d rather be safe somewhere else than to be in danger trying to save my house.
The rest of it is that the Santa Ana winds are bad. When the winds die down and there is some humidity in the air, it’s much easier to fight the fire. Until then, though…
I’m not so sure - we’re having bushfires here already this season, and were two weeks ago when it was still officially winter.
Are you to young to remember the big fire in the Oakland Berkeley hills?
I recall it burning a lot of houses. More that were burnt in the 2007 San Diego fires. Or the 2003 fires.
Since when are fishing losses a Disaster?
Nope, I was here for it. It was also almost 20 years ago, and not an annual event like the fires in SoCal. Hence, my saying I feel safer here than in other areas.
Tell me, are there free places for evacuees to go? Because otherwise, I can believe a lot of people have to figure economics into it. “I can stay at home for free and maybe even save my house that would otherwise burn OR I can abandon it and have to spend hundreds of dollars a day for room and board.”
Because not everyone will have friends/family who can put them up within driving distance but outside the range of the fire.
If you live in an area dependent on fishing for most of the economy, and your a fisherman, and your spouse works in the fish canning factory in town… I could see “fishing losses” being, at least potentially, a disaster.
I was close in pronunciation at least =)
I like the idea of not making cookie cutter green grassy yards. I like diversity. Why force green lawns on a desert, or a subtropical place like Key West…there are way cool plants everywhere.
In florida my grandparents house had white marble chips as the lawn, and they had a pair of orange trees, and decorative rocks with neat plants bedded in around the yard.
Anybody reminded of that old joke with the guy who’s house was in a flood plain? Short version (not told well): He was told to evacuate. He refused to go. He said “the Lord will take care of me.” The water was up above his front steps. His neighbor stopped by in a rowboat and offered to take him. He refused to go. He said “the Lord will take care of me.” The water was up over the second floor. A rescue team in a powerboat came by to pick him up. He refused to go. He said “the Lord will take care of me.” The water was up to his roof. A helicopter team came to get him. He refused to go. He said “the Lord will take care of me.” The water rose over his roof and he died. When he got to heaven, he asked the Lord, “Why didn’t you take care of me?” The Lord responded, “I warned you. Then I sent you a rowboat, a powerboat, AND a helicopter! what more did you want?”
And that’s exactly what happened in New Orleans during/after Hurricane Katrina.
The shelters are free. However, if you don’t have a car, and there are only so many shelters scattered about the city, you might have to spend some money for transportation to the shelter. If you have sick or disabled family members, this problem is exacerbated by an order of magnitude.
Another factor to consider is that many, if not most, shelters do not allow pets. I have three and would have to stay in a hotel because I would never abandon my pets to fend for themselves in a hurricane. So it would cost me money to evacuate. I do have a couple friends who live several hours north of me so if I could get to them I could stay for free… *if *they don’t mind me introducing my critters to their critters. That’s a lot of ifs, so I plan for evacuation to cost me. All La Quinta hotels accept pets, and I think all Motel 6s accept pets as well.
I clicked on this thread to talk about the morons in Florida (and other hurricane-prone states) who refuse to leave. But then I thought about Katrina, and sometimes, if you’re flat broke and you don’t own a car and all of your family and friends are in the same boat… sometimes there really is no other choice.
That said, I think it’s mostly inexcusable to be completely oblivious to the news/weather when you live in a hurricane prone area and not have a plan. There is some element of “it can’t happen to me” at work here. There is also the attitude that some people underestimate the power of hurricanes and think they are going to run outside and nail a few shingles back on to their roof in the middle of a storm. After enduring your first hurricane, you don’t make that same stupid assumption twice. Even in a weak hurricane, you learn quickly that you’d be taking your life in your hand by attempting such a stunt.
My rule of thumb is: If the storm is a weak Cat 3 or lower; that is, sustained winds under 110 mph, then I don’t go anywhere. I am well aware of what my house can withstand and what it cannot and I live on high ground, well away from flood-prone areas. When winds hit 111+, my policy is to get the f••k outta Dodge, with my critters. Looking at the data on NOAA and NHC websites, it looks like that is about the threshold between “some damage, but endurable and live-through-able” and “complete devastation.”
Agreed, there are worse states–but that’s not what you said. You stated (perhaps hyperbolically) that California was no worse than any other state, when that’s clearly not the case. It certainly looks to be in the top 10, per the map I linked.
Since they can presumably cause as big an impact on the economy of an area as a tornado through a farming area that avoids houses but hits fields. If you look at the numbers, that particular disaster was five incidences out of 1,628: that’s about 0.31%.
So the fact that you guys would be all packed, thus not losing any worldly possessions, isn’t because you’re “not idiots” but because you have less stuff?
Well, hey! I just found FEMA’s list of declared disasters by state.
Note that that’s a list of number of disasters declared, and it follows almost exactly states by population then size. No surprise that CA- being the most populous state and one of the largest has a pretty good number of disasters declared. (More important states are better at using leverage at getting a Federal Disaster declared in borderline cases)
Only OK is out of place in the top 5.
SoCal is about 20 to 30 times larger or more than your definition of the greater bay area. So I am not sure you have good evidence for it being much safer from fires.
Certainly, sheer square mileage and population are going to factor in. However, that’s not going to be the sole determiner.
Surely you concede that given disasters are much more likely to occur in some areas than others. For instance, nobody would be surprised by a hurricane in Florida, but one in North Dakota would raise some eyebrows. There is no magic equalibrium of disasters that every square mile of the country strives to maintain–being less likely to have Disaster A does not make Disaster B more likely. So, it is only natural that some areas of the country, just by virtue of their geography, are going to be more prone to disasters than others.
I think people who stay in the face of a disaster are crazy. But that is their right. If they think their stuff is worth risking their life over, it is not my business to make the decision for them.
I like storms and when I was in a hurricane ,I sat on the porch of the motel and watched it. I wanted to see what it looked like and sounded like. It seems to take a long time to get by and when the eye comes through you realize it is only half done and the winds will now come for the opposite direction.
Fine.
But when you get in real trouble you may expect rescue thus putting other people’s life in danger. Read the article linked in the OP and you can see an instance where rescuers had to perform a dangerous rescue to pluck idiots who stayed in the face of the fire.
I like the idea above. Have everyone who wants to stay sign a waiver that they are on their own for the duration of that given threat. If they get in real trouble they’ll just have to deal with it on their own.