A fascinating, moving post from a San Diego resident, via Aish:
We live in La Jolla, which means "The Jewel." Our community is little more than a stone's throw from one of the prettiest pieces of coastline in the entire county and boasts the best weather too. We have a lovely shul with over 280 families, a spa-like mikvah, and an eruv on the way. This past Shabbat, as we do every week, we enjoyed our shul kiddush al fresco, socializing around the towering Torrey Pine tree that defines our shul's courtyard. We could not have predicted that such a short time later, our blue skies would turn toxic, the crisp ocean breezes replaced with menacing winds and our Torrey Pine and its courtyard laden with ash.Read the rest, and try to decide for yourself what you really care about.
Thankfully, our normally idyllic coastal enclave seems to be out the path of the fire -- at least for now. But as the communities immediately to the North and to the East of us were steadily evacuated, my husband and I were increasingly concerned: What if we were next? What if a call comes in the middle of the night asking us -- telling us -- to leave?
2 comments:
What a great site! I have enjoyed reading through here and I will place a link on my blog to yours.. perhaps you'd like to visit mine and then return the favor?
B'Shalom, Yehudi
One has to wonder about why the fires are allowed to continue to burn like this year after year.
Given that many European countries, that face the exact same conditions manage to prevent most of their coastal communities from burning to the ground. France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Croatia, Greece, etc. because they use the initial attack water bomber planes designed exactly to do this. ( Yes, Greece took it on the chin this year but that was mostly due to bad management of the planes they had, and as well they lost a few planes due to accidents just before they had last summers disastrous fires.)
Don't like sounding like a conspirator, but the technology is available and the cost of maintaining and owning a small fleet of these planes, would be at least half of what is lost every year.
The canucks sent one down and CNN even had video of it. Nice shot as it extinguished a large blaze threating homes.
Mind you this is the state that a few years ago fired a Fire chief because a couple of these planes (from Quebec, Ca.) were there for some other reason and he requested that they be used to help them. They were, the fires were put out - and he was fired.
Makes one question, eh?
Bet if Israel faced this they'd have them.
Post a Comment