Wind & Fire

The Santa Ana winds have started blowing again in Southern California. (As you no doubt have heard, in Northern California the winds have also been howling and the despicable and criminally stupid officials of PG&E have turned off the power to 1,000,000+ people for several days in order to avoid liability for any brush fires that might be sparked when their horribly poorly maintained system starts breaking and dropping  live power lines into dry brush. But I digress…)

My first reaction when I got home this afternoon was the “Hawkeye Pierce” go-to response for me – humor:

“Wind damage at our house – be strong, we will rebuild!”

This had been hanging by a cup hook but twisting in the 35 to 50 knot winds it had literally unscrewed itself and fallen. Hadn’t seen that before.

Yes, there were a couple of branches down in our yard. And on the way home I had seen three separate spots where streets or business driveways were blocked by fallen trees.

But our power was still on. This barely rose to the level of “inconvenience.” Nothing like everyone who was trying to deal with a multi-day blackout caused by bureaucratic incompetence, greed, and stupidity.

Then the fires started here in SoCal. (Fortunately, nothing near us. We had enough of that shit last year, thank you very much!)

Other areas haven’t been so lucky:

Welcome to California in the era of climate change.