Get The Sickness!

All Quiet on the Western Front

A light rain this morning may help close the current chapter on the wildfires that have been the top story in the news this past week. I got a call from a friend in Norway and an email from my sister who was in Ireland this week checking to see if I was OK as the images of the fire were being broadcast around the world.

What was ironic, that despite me being in a mandatory evacuation zone (by 300 years), I personally was effected in some surprising ways. As a self employed consultant, if I don't work, I don't pull a salary, I tried to maintain my focus on doing what I needed to get done. My high school age daughter ended up getting the whole week off of school so I did have the opportunity to spend a bit more time with her than usual. In recorded and email updates from her school district, I was kept up to date with what her school closing schedule would be. In the last update, it was reported that 20 staff members and 340 student lost their homes which is truly tragic and speaks to the magnitude of the impact on those closet to to fire. I heard one neighborhood in nearby Rancho Bernardo lost over 200 homes.

I received a call from a friend in the southeast who indicated that she would stick with hurricanes as her disaster of choice. I found that ironic as even though a few miles away from me hundreds of people were losing their homes, I had very little concern about my personal safety. My home was in an area that was designated a mandatory evacuation zone which may likely be criticized in the future as a bit of an over reaction by public officials. I believe over 300,000 people lived in areas that we within the evacuation zones. A case can be made that well over 100,000 people were evacuated prematurely. I'm guessing the fire would have had to burn through about 5000 homes before my neighborhood would have been threatened. Comparing hurricanes to fires is not really a valid analogy as technology can do very little to effect a hurrican and massive evacuations are often required and certainly extremely disruptive. This recent fire is likely to stimulate tens of millions of venture capital to develop solutions for mitigating the impacts of fires and increasing the capabilities of protecting homes from wildfires. Cisterns, battery backup power, and small powerful water pumps are likely to be items that homeowners backing up to open space areas are required by their insurance companies to invest in if the want continued insurance. Let's look to entrepreneurs and the American spirit to make sure the next wild fire season is less impactful.

posted by Michael Sick @ 12:38 PM