Greetings from
The Publisher . . .
Fires—Best to Expect the Worst & a Very Real Solution
Wow. What can be said? A scary Halloween is supposed to be a make-believe event.
After listening to the fire coverage for too long, I thought, “I wish I had a nickel for every time I heard the news people talk about people not knowing if they had a home to return to or not, or what was left for them.” It became old and too predictable, but if you were evacuated and didn't know if your home survived what else could you think about? As long as those closest to you were safe, it's hard to imagine that you could even hear or concentrate on much else.
At one point, with the Witch fire to the south and east of me, another fire to the north in Fallbrook, and another next door in San Marcos , I started to think about what to pack. What's clear very quickly is that cars aren't built to contain all that's important. I heard one evacuee say after returning to his unburned home, that the first thing he noticed was all the important things he forgot to pack.
Fire week was our busiest week of production and two people who normally help were evacuated. One went to Temecula and then had to leave there too. Another lady, susceptible to respiratory problems, needed to stay home. With the air and everything going on, a couple of others missed time too. Carola's home became an informal evacuation center, her computer went down and Planetary Cycles came in late, but it got here. Jennifer was out of town and had to decide if she should fly back to Sand Diego Monday night, as scheduled, when the fires were 0% contained. She did.
Everything seemed to arrive late, but we turned it up a notch and even expanded by eight pages to get more in about the fires. It was a tough cycle, but tough is certainly relative.
When things looked the darkest—when it really looked as if most of us were surrounded by fires and all of them were zero percent contained, Secretary Michael Chertoff appeared, just in time, to tell us how “tremendous” everyone was doing. Perhaps they thought we need our confidence boosted.
Not long after, I flipped the channels and landed on a Sun Dance special on New Orleans . At the point I tuned in someone was saying how badly FEMA had failed in rebuilding and to watch out—their next failure would be an earthquake in California . Humm.
I don't think anyone wanted to discover this first hand, but we now get to see just how “tremendous” FEMA can be. To his credit, Chertoff criticized the fake news conference about assistance to fire victims in Southern California that FEMA staged.
Didn't it get old though, seeing so many of our elected officials congratulate all over each other—over and over? And meanwhile the fire was 0% contained, planes were not able to drop retardant and firefighters could only watch. And while you night think the opposite, I was watching, our “kings” did have clothes on.
If the only criteria were how many people perished because of the fire, then the results were tremendous. If you are measuring the courage it takes to stand up to the heat and unpredictability of a fire, then that was incredible too.
When you're fighting the largest fire in California history, it would be amazing if there were not some glitches and second-guessing about how it was done. There were delays that will be evaluated before long.
What was the most stunning was the strategy. What should have become clear when we had the 2003 Cedar Fires was that the fire department puts out house fires pretty well; but combine Santa Ana winds and a community on fire and there's not much they can do.
The strategy for this fire was to 1-evacuate, 2-let it burn and 3-after it passes, see what structures can still be saved by firefighters.
While Gov. Schwarzenegger was described as tireless, he has also vetoed four bills to increase staffing and fire resources since the 2003 Cedar Fire. In May, the California Department of Forestry (CDF) criticized him for not coming through with promised equipment; and not learning from the Cedar Fire.
While several County Supervisors also had a large media and community presence, and showed how much they cared, San Diego County is the only major California County without a County Fire Department .
There was also some grumbling that the resources we needed were in Iraq . The CDF fire chief in San Diego stated on ABC World News Tonight that he had 1500–2000 fire fighters and needed twice that.
Some of us were forced into evacuation centers and met new people, perhaps neighbors. Events such as this do build a greater sense of community. They get us to look beyond ourselves and see how linked we are. That's not a bad part.
While there was talk of what to do in the future I don't hear any real solutions. Sen. Diane Feinstein wondered if these areas should continue to be insured if fires come repeatedly from the same areas. I had to think, “That'll stop those pesky fires from getting too big and visiting San Diego 's cites.” Denying insurance would definitely discourage the fire gods. The Senator ought to know that people in the “boonies” pay a very high rates for insurance—if they can get it.
Some think letting it burn is the natural order of things. The intense heat from a forest fire is exactly the heat needed to release seeds from pine cones to regenerate and renew the forest.
While we may have trees around us, we don't really qualify as a forest. We're a community of people and buildings. It may be natural, but it's a little late to think in terms of bringing in teepees and moving during fire season.
Some economists said that eventually this will cause an economic upsurge in San Diego that will be good for us. I had to wonder if their own economic strategy included burning their own houses every few years. That's hardly productive growth—it's starting over.
It could be productive though, if we rebuilt differently. Remember the Japanese fellow in Laguna Beach who designed his dream home to last. He built it with fireproof materials and when the fires hit Laguna a few years ago his was the only house standing in his neighborhood.
The “guilt” he felt seeing the plight of his neighbors eventually forced him to sell and move away.
One estimate is that it would take 30 years or more to rebuild or remodel all of our homes. That's too long, but it's something we can start doing.
One thing I appreciated about the SDUT was the editorial they ran during the fires about the best way to get the San Diego region more power. What they came to was that they couldn't come to one best solution. Solar had its drawbacks, they said. And they admitted, given that the Poomacha Fire was started by a downed power line, that building power lines through fire country—SDG&E's proposed Sunrise Powerlink—may not be a wise choice either.
I think solar has its drawbacks—for them—because they don't know enough about it. And because they calculate the cost of solar without considering lives and health care costs, in essence, the true cost of fossil fuels. (See this column, Oct. 07, online.)
A Real Solution
Imagine this: What if we could turn the undergrowth and brush that builds up every few years and use it to help satisfy one of our biggest needs.
There's a company called Envirepel that is working toward that. Headed by Tony Arand, the company collects organic yard waste—grass clipping, leaves, branches—and also construction wood waste. You pay them a fee, which is cheaper than the dump, to take your yard waste and they make electricity.
Engineer Joe Prizzi explained the gasification process to me. Fuel is heated until it becomes a gas. The gas burns at lower temperature and more completely than solid fuel, that means cleaner and more efficient burning. The burning creates steam, which turns a generator and creates electricity.
It's an amazing way to work on two problems at once—more electricity and less fuel for fires. Given that we are running out of landfills, maybe it's three problems they're working on.
The pilot plant in Vista being built now, will feed 2 megawatts of electricity into the grid by early next year. That powers roughly 1500 homes. Plants that can produce 60–90 megawatts are the goal. That could be 135,000 homes. By comparison, the Encina plant produces 900 megawatts.
It's not inconceivable that 10 plants could be built in the county depending on the volume of material to be burned. In addition to our own backyards, there's a lot of fuel out there to harvest.
If the government won't get behind this and collect fire fuel, maybe individuals could collect it the way people collect trash on the beach.
This solution needs to be part of the discussion on what we can do. I think it's a great idea that we should let people know about. Ask your friends to read this online. We can email PDFs upon request. This idea is one whose time has come.
It has been an unprecedented time for us. Some people showed their best and others their worst. But more that anything there was the sense that people were working together and eager to help others—and that we'd get through it. San Diegans showed the world great courage and community spirit in the face of unprecedented danger. And, of course, the politicians did a tremendous job too.
What we can count on is that we will have fires. Why not accept that, prepare for that, and focus on preventing—not fighting—wildfires. When they come, give them less fuel.
We either pay attention to the undergrowth and our landscaping, or we pay to rebuild. After these fires I hope there is enough public resolve to push for real solutions.
Have a great month,
Steve
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