California Wildfires Compared to Hurricane Katrina Disaster

By Anastacia Mott Austin

The National Weather Service has announced that the velocity of Santa Ana winds should die down this week, from 70 miles per hour to about 20, bringing relief to firefighters hoping to contain the fierce wildfires enveloping southern California since Sunday.

However, it’s not time to celebrate yet, say experts. High temperatures and extremely low humidity are expected to continue, which leaves many areas in tremendous danger of reignited fires.

Thus far, over 263,000 acres have been destroyed by the fires, as many as 900,000 people have been evacuated from their homes, over 1500 homes and businesses have burned, and a number of people have been killed, though the numbers cannot yet be verified. Communications have been difficult from within the affected areas, as power and phone lines have been completely shut down.

There are 16 wildfires still burning, covering an area as far as Santa Barbara to the north and as far south as the border between California and Mexico. Contributing greatly to the rapid advance of the fires are winds known as "Santa Ana winds;" hot, dry winds which blow in from the desert. They are also mythically called "the murder winds," for their supposed ability to make people do crazy things—driven mad by the high-pitched howling sound of the wind.

The winds have spread the fires quickly and grounded helicopters carrying fire retardants.

The scope of the disaster, which began on Sunday, October 21st, is being compared to the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans.

President Bush responded quickly by declaring the area a state of emergency earlier this week, and then issued a major federal disaster declaration shortly after. The two declarations will pave the way for federal aid to be released to the area.

Said California governor Arnold Shwarzenegger in a statement to the press, "This declaration means millions of dollars in much needed assistance to help our state rebuild and recover. The federal government did the right thing."

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who faced stinging criticism in the wake of the Katrina disaster, held a press conference. "I think there's no question that a couple of lessons from Katrina we’re putting into effect here are, first of all, planning and preparation in advance for these kinds of challenges," said Chertoff. "Second, we have really flooded the zone as quickly as possible by staging assets to deal both with the firefighting issue and the response issue."

Thousands of people are being housed in emergency shelters in schools, auditoriums, and any other facilities equipped to handle large numbers of people. Qualcomm Stadium, home to the San Diego Chargers, is temporary shelter to over 12,000 evacuees. The Chargers have traveled to Arizona, where they will face the Cardinals next week.

But is this disaster really similar to Hurricane Katrina? Despite comparisons made by Michael Chertoff, there really isn’t much that is similar to the devastation faced by residents of Louisiana and neighboring states.

First, the area of New Orleans hit by Katrina was essentially under water, hampering efforts to deliver supplies to victims.

Second, the system by which evacuation warnings were delivered was quite different. San Diego County employed their "reverse 911" system, in which a voicemail delivered warnings to thousands of people immediately and automatically, allowing them to evacuate in a timely fashion.

In addition, evacuees were allowed to bring their pets, avoiding the heart-wrenching, devastating decisions Katrina victims were forced to make.

A significant difference between the two is that the majority of Katrina victims, especially those who refused orders to evacuate, were poor minorities with nowhere else to go. By contrast, many of the residents fleeing the San Diego fires lived in wealthy areas, some with vacation homes or resources to seek shelter at hotels.

The atmosphere at Qualcomm Stadium was more vacation carnival than desperate panic. So much food and water was donated to emergency shelters that donors were turned away. At Qualcomm, Starbucks had set up camp and booths were offering free massages and make-your-own sandwich stations. People were checking email on laptops and scanning for aerial photos of the fires, while others played guitars in groups or did face painting.

"Nobody does disasters better than California," said David Paulison, a FEMA administrator, after viewing the atmosphere at Qualcomm.

This doesn’t mean the fires have not been devastating. Many people will have lost their homes, their personal belongings, their neighborhoods. The damages are estimated to be at approximately $1 billion.

8,000 firefighters from all over the country are working to put out the fires. Bruce Cartelli, fire chief of the San Diego Fire Department, told reporters, "It's probably the worst significant event in my career of 36 years."

Rob Tracy agrees. After losing his home once before during the Cedar fire of 2003, he didn’t hesitate to evacuate his home in Julian earlier this week. "You only have to lose everything once to be a believer," said Tracy to reporters. "This is familiar territory, unfortunately."