Marty's Travels

My house has wheels

Santa Rosa

SR is about 175,000 population, in a tight place so it’s dense. Streets are narrow and short-lived, making navigating by dead reckoning quite difficult. My gps does what the locals do: get on 101 or CA-12 to go to the next exit to avoid winding around on the surface.

I haven’t seen the burned area yet, but will tomorrow. Today, KQED released the first of what they found investigating the fire. It’s a compelling story, worth hearing if you’re interested in emergency management stuff. The first take-away is that when a disaster reaches a certain size, whatever humans want to do goes out the window. It’s the same as a major earthquake or hurricane: you are on your own. Similarly, the fire took out telephone lines and cell towers, ergo no communications were possible.

Napa, Sonoma, Lake, and Mendocino counties didn’t have a chance to deal with the size of the fire. CalFire is big, but it was beyond them.

So while I’m listening to KQED’s story, it’s being interrupted with updates about a shooter at the Veteran’s Home in Yountville, Napa county. I went by the place yesterday. It’s an amazing building.

Interesting place, as I get to know it….