Arnold Schwarzenegger is the governor of California, and he actually seems to know what the hell he’s doing.
Then again, there were signs all along:
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October 25th, 2007
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I like Arnold, he has a lot of charisma. But California has long been preparing itself for natural disasters. It’s the history of our state.
As they say, the four seasons are: fire, flood, earthquake, riots.
I think the big difference between New Orleans and San Diego, is that apart from the TV screens, the San Diego disaster is highly localized and left most of the infrastructure in great shape. And there was lots of power available to light stadiums…. Your house is burning and that really sucks, but you can “mostly” self-rescue. Once you make it down the mountain, you don’t have to worry about rising waters between you and the stadium, and you don’t have to worry about the food, or getting heat, or getting rid of heat, or obtaining medical care.
In fact, I think that points once again to one of Bush’s big failures. After 9/11, he had an opportunity to encourage, restructure, refocus, civil defense towards a more local, more self-help, prepared, well-stocked structure.
Californians know to have three days of food and water available for after the earthquake. Bush could have asked the entire country to prepare as well. And encouraged first aid/cpr classes, and done a whole lot more.
So I like Arnold, but I think what happened in San Diego was the result of a long history of disasters occurring in California.
I agree with Jerry. Fires, unlike hurricanes, will hit a given region every single fire season. We’re largely prepared for it. In fact, the rule of thumb in Malibu is that your house is GOING to burn down eventually.
So Arnold is doing what a leader should by being there, putting a face on leadership, and getting funds to deal with the aftermath. Everything Bush and Blanco didn’t do after Katrina.
I’m going to take a devil’s advocate position here, because I don’t think that New Orleans residents were unaware that their town was going to flood. They built the thing on a swamp. They created levees to hold the sea at bay. In the same manner as SoCal residents prepared for the eventual wildfires, it could be argued that the NOLa folks should have prepared for flooding; and I would argue that most of them did. They were not, however, prepared for the extent of the damage Katrina would wreak, nor were they prepared for the cynical expectation that no help was coming.