The California Fires

Friday, September 30, 2005
If you haven't heard, their are a bunch of fires going on in California. The air is full of ash and you can see the smoke even in Pasadena, which is quite far from where things are actually happening. These are huge fires and several thousand acres have already been burned with only a small percentage of the fires actually contained.

One of the things that crossed my mind was, when can we expect some Federal Aid? How many billions of dollars should California expect to help pay for the fire recovery. Doesn't the federal government pay for everything when we have a natural disaster. Granted, Katrina probably caused 20x the damage these fires are causing but even that would still leave about $3 billion in aid that should be coming this way.

If people don't have fire insurance, can our attorney general sue to make private insurance firms pay for it?

Natural disasters happen. However, these things are best handled by the state and private companies. Having an expectation that the national government will respond to every disaster is ridiculous. Where does one draw the line? When is a disaster not big enough for the federal government to take notice. Wouldn't you be pissed if you fell right under that line?

It's funny to me that everyone complains about the federal governments response after the Katrina disaster but what do people want? More government! It's like in business when there are too many meetings going on for you to actually get work done so what do they do? They have meetings to discuss how to have less meetings!

2 comments:

Kat said...

what caused the fire? if it's arson like last time then the gvmt shouldn't have to pay. that's the difference between a tragedy and a natural disaster.

Anonymous said...

The picture of that poor girl in ragged clothes, standing on the roof, trying to put out the fire by herself, with no federal help in sight, is proof that George Bush doesn't care about white people.
-John