There were a couple stories in our local newspapers today highlighting the disaster that was last year’s Santiago fire. The L.A. Times reported that a “report shows Orange County firefighters didn’t have enough resources to deal with the 28,000-acre Santiago blaze that destroyed 42 structures during the fall Southern California wildfire siege.” Blame that on the OC GOP – in particular the Red Faced County contingent led the charge against the OC Measure D, which would have provided our OC firefighters with the resources they needed.
And the OC Register reported that a group of day laborers “climbed steep canyon hills Saturday to help prevent possible erosion from last fall’s Santiago Fire, symbolizing their desire to contribute in the very communities where they live and seek work in.” Isn’t that ironic? These are the same Latino day laborers that south county Reeps have been trying to run out of town. The Lake Forest City Council has in fact made it very hard for day laborers to find work. In fact one of the big stories this week involved the arrest of the Placentia Public Works Director when he tried to hire day laborers in Lake Forest.
It is interesting that both our local papers are showing us how bad the OC GOP looks when it comes to the Santiago fire and to the immigrant workers in our community. How long before Orange County goes blue? Barring that, I bet a lot more voters will be going DTS (decline to state) in the next few elections.
Our local Fire authority leaders, and Assemblyman Spitzer in most every press conference I saw during the fire, bemoaned the lack of State provided air support and blamed that as a major reason the fire got away from them. Reminded me of the Mayor of New Orleans after the Katrina disaster saying “we called for the Calvary, and the Calvary never came.” The script these days seems to be to blame a higher level of government for failing to fill the void when local government fails —- at least when it comes to disaster preparedness and management.