Sherry Chandler

The headline at the NYTimes says: With Katrina Fresh, Bush Moves Briskly:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 — It was not quite 2:30 a.m. in Washington on Tuesday when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California asked President Bush to declare an emergency because of the wildfires raging in his state. An hour or so later, the request — pre-approved by Mr. Bush before he left the Oval Office on Monday evening — was granted.

…

For a presidency still haunted by memories of Hurricane Katrina, the forceful round-the-clock response was a political no-brainer — the “anti-Katrina,” in the words of Peter Wehner, a former domestic policy adviser to Mr. Bush.

The action is as it should be. California should get quick help from the Federal government.

But the anti-Katrina this is not.

There is a devil in the details here. Although the Times article doesn’t mention it directly, they have posted a sidebar with a telling comparison of demographics: The San Diego area is 66% white, New Orleans was 67% black; in San Diego the poverty rate is 9%, in New Orleans it was 28%; and in San Diego 95% of households own a vehicle, in New Orleans 73%.

Not to mention that California has a high-profile action-hero rich Republican governor with powerful backers whereas Louisiana had a homely, grass-roots woman Democrat.

I don’t think Mr. Bush is going to expiate his sins by getting timely aid to California.

Postscript: I have been mulling how these global warming phenomena keep blindsiding us. Prepared now (perhaps) for monster hurricanes (water), what we get is monster fire. I have also been asking myself whether the 7 lean years with Mr. Bush have really seen more disaster than, say, the 8 fat years with Mr. Clinton, or whether our more pessimistic and fearful attitude only makes it seem so.

So far though, we’ve had major urban and suburban destruction on three coasts under Bush. That’s probably pretty unique.

Here’s an item from Devilstower at the Daily Kos that is of interest to us here locally:

Thirty Days to Save the Mountains

For several days in the summer of 1980, I tromped around the Kentucky side of the Appalachians, asking people about their water. I wasn’t doing a taste test, or peddling water softeners. I was preparing an impact statement on a new mine going into the area. There weren’t many houses to visit — a few dozen scattered along a set of “hollers” that cut into the sides of a single slump-shouldered mountain, but it took me more than a week to get to them all, traveling up and down dirt roads that often required me to leave my car next to the highway and walk.

Almost all the people I met there were desperately poor, and most of them were elderly. There were rickety frame houses, tar-paper shacks, and log cabins that had not come from some some factory-produced kit. No more than a handful of them had running water inside the house. Again and again people led me to hand-dug wells or neighboring streams to show me where they got their water for drinking and washing. Two 80-something sisters took me out to see a little spring that peculated from the base of a sandstone bluff. They walked a good hundred yards to get there, carrying a plastic milk jug to collect water. When we got back to their tiny stone and timber home, they showed me pictures of their children — some of them living far away, others dead for years — and offered to fix me supper. The spring water was cold and sweet.

But it didn’t stay that way for long because the mine got approved.

The post asks that we call our Congress Critters to ask them to support the Clean Water Protection Act. Here’s a list of the bill’s cosponsors. From Kentucky, Chandler and Yarmuth are supporters, but no other Representative.

You can find your representative at this link.