Wildfires:
photocredit: signonsandiego
"The fire doesn't affect me directly so I try not to bring myself down by thinking."
Some other San Diego Resident
Highest-Ever Profits
"Property-casualty insurers, which cover damage to homes and cars, reported their highest-ever profit of $73 billion last year, up 49 percent from $49 billion in 2005, according to Highline Data LLC, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based firm that compiles insurance industry data."
Please note this site is not a criticism of firefighters but of the often unsupportive infrastructure behind those fighters.
California's Old Fire
Wildfire:
Have you heard about the fire department for the seventh-largest city in the country that was at least 25 stations deficient?
How about the fire department that was 500 firefighters short?
It's all true – and if you thought San Diego City fire-rescue personnel were paid too much overtime, wait until you see how thin they are stretched."
Frank DeClercq
Union Tribune
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060326/news_lz1e26declerc.html
photocredit: nationalgeographic
photocredit: cdf-firefighters
Wildfire:
"This week's catastrophic wildfires in San Diego and across Southern California are merely the latest reminders of what is becoming increasingly obvious with each year that passes: In a thousand dusty and brush-choked canyons, in tinder-dry forests redolent with the sweet sent of pine pitch, and on wind-swept sage and grasslands all across the American West, major disasters are brewing.
Until events like those of this week compel our attention, few of us contemplate just how dire the threat to our lives and our property really is."
Daniel James Brown
Brown is author of “Under a Flaming Sky: The Great Hinckley Firestorm of 1894” (Harper Perennial, August 2007). Visit www.DanielJamesBrown.com for more information about the Hinckley firestorm.
Union Tribune
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20071024/news_lz1e24brown.html
California's New Fire
The Chief:
"After munching on sandwiches, chips and fruit salad, San Diego Fire Chief Jeff Bowman silenced the room with a short goodbye.
Bowman officially retires today. At 54, he steps down as an accomplished but frustrated fire chief. He leaves behind a loyal staff worried about the department's future.
“I will miss the people, but I won't miss the job,” Bowman said...
Three days ago, in the lunchroom of Fire Station 1 downtown, Bowman told the two dozen men and women in dark blue uniforms that they deserve thanks for sticking with an understaffed and underfunded department.
“Under-everything” is how Bowman put it. “But you all have lived it. I've just talked about it.”
The response was instantaneous.
“We all appreciated that you would speak the truth,” one firefighter said."
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060602/news_1n2bowman.html
Please note this site is not a criticism of firefighters but of the often unsupportive infrastructure behind those fighters.
All Southern California On Fire
bravenet.com