> I am following the news about the fires in California, and like many other people, I can't help but compare it to the Katrina mess. The federal government is in a lose-lose situation. If they don't do enough, they look incompetent, but if they do too much, people will say, no wonder, this time it's California, not Louisiana. This time it's rich, white folks, this time it's people who vote. I just wish they had some place for the refugees besides another Superdome.

I'm not sure what the national coverage has been like, but it's been mostly good news from my perspective and that of everyone I've talked to. I live close enough to the coast that I wasn't ordered to evacuate (though I was right on the edge of the "voluntary evacuation" zone), but about a half-dozen of my co-workers had to. So far I don't know anybody who has lost a home, though a friend of mine has a home one block south of a neighborhood that was destroyed.

Unlike Louisiana, California is an actual state and we appear to have had quite a bit of planning in place to deal with it. As far as I know, there has been only one death directly related to the fire. The other few were mainly people who were evacuated and died from medical complications as a result. Not to diminish their loss, but 3 of the 5 I read about were older than 90 and in hospitals/nursing homes. I don't know that their deaths are exactly caused by the fire.

As far as evacuations went, we seem to have done quite well. We turned the local football stadium into a major evacuation center, but every single image and report I saw from there was positive. People seemed to be living in decent conditions, though I can't imagine it was exactly fun. At several points throughout the week the city had to tell people to stop showing up to volunteer or donate supplies, because they had more than they needed.

Much of this was done without federal assistance. We didn't really start seeing much of a response from the feds until about 24-48 hours after things started, and all the evacuations were at the state/local level. As far as I can tell, mainly the feds have helped us obtain extra men and equipment, and FEMA will be offering money to help people who lost things in the fire.

It has been trying, but surprisingly orderly. I've seen only one report of looting (two teenagers were arrested for it) but otherwise it's been reasonably calm throughout the city. I work a few miles from the football stadium, and I expected that area to be a traffic nightmare, but it hasn't been -- lighter than it normally is, even.

We're certainly used to wildfires every October, and we had a massive outbreak just four years ago, but San Diego has never seen anything this bad. But there is still a very optimistic spirit (especially now that the worst seems to be over) and everyone here is just amazed at how smoothly we seem to have handled such a disaster.

Stephen