At its best…what California looked like before the wildfires – Rose Bowl and the San Gabriel mountains as a backdrop. (Press Pros Images)
Ten days removed from being in Los Angeles for the Rose Bowl, I watched in horror last week as that very community burned to the ground…helpless to prevent it, and questionable in how they plan to rebuild….if they ever can!
Like you, I watched in disbelief last week as Los Angeles burned to the ground.
And what made it particularly poignant was having been there just a few days before to cover the Rose Bowl. I walked some of those very streets and drove on Santa Monica Boulevard – drove through Pacific Palisades.
I ate in a restaurant on the Santa Monica pier the previous Tuesday, and was amazed to see it still standing on TV last week, saved only by the fact that the coastal highway stood between it and the raging fires on the cliffs across the boulevard.
The utter devastation is impossible to believe – Oh, my Lord scale – 30,000 acres incinerated, and thousands of families left homeless and helpless. Incredibly poignant, I repeat, for the fact that I saw it just 72 hours before the fires broke out!
It isn’t enough to say that you feel bad for the people of Los Angeles and it’s surrounding communities. Bad doesn’t cover it. But what’s amazing is that so many people choose to risk it.
Fires, you see, have always been a problem. They don’t get a lot of rain, and when they do they have mudslides.
And when there is a fire the incessant winds along the coast and in the canyons are like a cutting torch. All this, and people you ask say they live there for the climate, when there are other warm places to live and no wildfires…places where the sales tax isn’t 10.25%, the highest in the country.
Gas was $4.49 a gallon when we were there. I filled up Friday night in Minster for $2.59.
I bought a couple of beers in the Sheraton Hotel lobby while I was there and paid $21.
We walked around the Staples Center (where the Lakers play) one afternoon and street vendors were selling hot dogs for $10.50.
The homeless problem is discouraging, and you’re always aware. They say they’re spending millions on it, but you can’t tell.
And nowhere that I’ve ever been have I seen the amount of questioning you hear and read about concerning the management of California. And in the present sense, Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass, and governor Gavin Newsome.
Reportedly, they cut $17 million dollars from the city’s fire and rescue budget just last year.
Newsome, when confronted by angry citizens over why the city’s fire hydrants didn’t work, was caught totally speechless – answerless – embarrassed on national news. This is the same Newsome who claims that California’s economy is one of the most robust in the country. And yet, the fire hydrants don’t work.
They ran out of water…when they’re right next door to the biggest ocean in world!
This is the same Newsome who’s claimed for years that the state is on its way to fixing its homeless issue. And yet, when I was there you had only to look two city blocks to see it for yourself.
And this same Newsome, when asked on yesterday’s Sunday morning shows about how Los Angeles will EVER be able to rebuild, was quick to call upon the graciousness of 1) philanthrophy, and 2) the federal government, citing a plan not unlike the Marshall Act of World War II.
The Marshall plan was a program of economic aid to countries of Western Europe devastated by World II. The United States feared that poverty in those countries would increase the appeal of communism. At the time we spent an estimated $13 billion – in today’s money, an estimated $150 billion.
Columnist Sonny Fulks writes OHSAA sports and Ohio State baseball for Press Pros Magazine.com.
But $13 billion wouldn’t touch the rebuild of Los Angeles at today’s values, which means taxpayers will be called on to spend a TRILLION by the time it’s done? Feel the pain? A Pasadena man I met at the Rose Bowl described California as continually living on the edge.
More discouraging…the insurance companies who’ve pulled out over regulatory practices and rising risk, leaving those homeowners holding the bag.
And there will be more fires in California. There will always be the fistfight over which is worth the investment, saving the environment or fixing the fire hydrants.
Or for that matter, Los Angeles, and the magnificent beauty that somehow time and management has taken for granted.
If what I saw last week is the future, I hope they have a lot of philanthrophy.
And I mean…a lot…of philanthrophy!
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