The Fire: Epilogue, Part 3

We all knew this would happen, at least those with cynical hearts.  Lawyers have descended on Santa Rosa and Sonoma County, lawyers from all over the U.S.A.. Lawyers who want to make money, who want people to sue everyone, who want a monetary piece of the pie, of the scraps of human grief, of the price of ashes.

Voices are being raised now, voices who need to blame someone for the loss of their home, their belongings, the things that anchored them to their world. The thought is that someone is to blame for this, and you can't fucking sue the wind, so let's sue someone else. Someone with deep pockets. Let's go after PGE and the city of Santa Rosa and the county of Sonoma. They should have fixed this BEFORE IT HAPPENED!

The fire raged from Calistoga to Santa Rosa, a distance of about 25 miles as the crow flies (but the fire didn't fly a direct route, it bounced all over the place as it determinedly torched everything it could) in about 3  hours.  Tell me, tell the world, what could have been done in that time?  No one knew it would be that horrific until the first few hours of Monday morning, October 9. At that point the wind was hurricane force and the fires (three began within 15 minutes of each other) created their own tornado force winds and vortices. Who could have mitigated that destruction?  Would some kind of an alarm have helped? Or would that have simply made everyone in Sonoma County take to the roads to flee?  There is no logic in that scenario. As there is no answer either.

I can only imagine the sorrow and the frustration and the anger that people have, those who lost their homes, about not getting a warning that the fire was on its way. But you can't go backwards and place blame that some warning system wasn't in place. Santa Rosa city and Sonoma County in general have no bell to ring to alert people that danger is ahead.

PGE works on their lines all the time, we have all witnessed their trucks cutting branches. But I predict that they will take the brunt of the blame and if they do, and if they are sued so egregiously as to bankrupt them, our entire utility system in Northern California will be at risk for the rest of our lives.  If the government takes over the utilities, maintenance of the lines (gas and electric) will go the way of our roads: potholes, broken barriers and no safety nets.

It seems, at this point, that the fire was caused because of a force of nature. (Please, oh, please do not say "An act of god" because, really?  What god would want this? A god of war?)  Extremely high winds, downed power lines, and the rest is history. Place blame if you will and you might win monetarily, you might win a sound bite, but in the long run it is a wrongful stance. You might win some money but you will lose in the long run morally.

I know very few people read this blog so I am not worried about blowback. But there should be huge outrage if the blame is concentrated on one utility company. Wind + heat + more wind = fire.  Could that have been prevented? In my opinion, No. 

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