[AccessD] So Cal fires perspective

Greg,

Give me a break!  If you evacuate a million people, then how can you say
"the only casualties were... " when you may very well have evacuated
hundreds of "would have been" casualties.  That is a non sequitur.  

The decisions to evacuate an area are not made in a vacuum.  There are
people trying to make these decisions based on information like the current
size of the fire, direction and speed of the wind, the current location of
fire crews, the number of trained firemen and equipment available,
evacuation routes, available police, available medics and other trained
emergency crews etc.  If they evacuate 1 million people, 1 million people
are inconvenienced.  If they make the wrong decision, people can and DO die!
Hmmm... inconvenience... death... inconvenience... death...

If asked to leave, people have no business staying behind.  Fighting fires
is not the job of the guy next door.  It is a dangerous, even deadly job.
How many of the million evacuated would have been deaths just because they
were 90 years old and couldn't breath the smoke without dying.  How many of
the eight who actually died would have died anyway from just being there
breathing smoke?  How many would have died staying behind to take care of
them when the fire jumped an entire neighborhood and ended up burning their
rest home to the ground?  Just because it didn't happened doesn't mean it
couldn't happen.

And precisely right, why not 10 million or 100 million?  Who makes that
decision?  How many houses might burn to the ground because you did not
evacuate a neighborhood until too late and then the equipment could not get
in because of traffic jams of people trying to get out?  And who should
stay?  I assume the women and children should leave?  But wait, no cars for
the poor guys to get out when the time comes?  Oh, I understand, we could
organize bus routes to run this "volunteer corp" of yours around eh?
Brilliant idea I must admit.  I kinda wish I had thought of it! 8-(

And how long should the men stay?  Until the fire is in the block behind
them?  Two blocks away?  A half mile away?  But wait, if the fire is in the
block next door isn't that exactly when you would be most value putting out
the "small incipient fires" caused by embers raining down?  But wait, if the
fire is just two houses away NOW is exactly when you would be of the most
value because of the embers raining down, right?  

Now, TAKE A LOOK AROUND YOU!!!  Of the 100 adult males in the blocks around
you how many would DIE OF A HEART ATTACK from ANY physical exertion?  So
let's ask every adult male to stick around and lose 1 out of 100 of them to
heart attacks.  Hmmm... if you assume out of 1 million people evacuated AT
LEAST 100K of them would be "adult males able to fight fires" and you assume
just 1 percent of them have heart attacks because they are just not
physically capable of doing the job.... hm... that is 1 THOUSAND heart
attack victims (or "only" 100?  or "only" 10?).  But wait, we could arrange
screening facilities in the middle of every block... to decide who stays and
goes...  OK, everybody, line up over there... let's get your blood
pressure... hmm.. could you do even 10 pushups for me to demonstrate that
you can do ANYTHING?

I have to assume from your "tone of voice" that you have ready scientific
answers to this question?  I also assume that you were right down there
offering your scientifically proofed advice to the "idiots" running the
show?  And of course I have to ask, how vocal would you be about the idiotic
decision NOT to evacuate when a hundred people die that should have been
evacuated.  And finally, how many of those who died because they were NOT
forced to evacuate would the family have won 100 million dollar law suits
against the city for the "idiotic decision" not to evacuate them?

I repeat, it is easy to second guess, and it is easy to ridicule the efforts
of those who are put on the spot to make those decisions.  I highly
recommend that YOU spend the many hours to go get training to be a fireman
and YOU go do it and then come back and repeat your remarks.  Tell me that
YOU are an expert on these matters and then your opinions will be highly
valued, until then they are just ridicule of people doing a lot of different
jobs that you quite obviously know nothing about.

John W. Colby
Colby Consulting
www.ColbyConsulting.com 
-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Greg Worthey
Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2007 9:52 AM
To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com
Subject: Re: [AccessD] So Cal fires perspective

John,

This is an example of the kind of jumping to extremes that causes the
toothpaste and nailclippers problem. I'm not saying that people should stand
in the middle of an inferno with a garden hose!!! If your house has any
significant fire going, get out. If your neighborhood is a firestorm, get
out. If you can't breathe, get out. But in many cases, homes are lost (AND
infernos grew into being) simply because no one was there to hold back small
incipient fires, spread by few embers blowing. Certainly some people stay
far too long and sometimes die--that is an error in judgment. But so is
calling everyone with a garden hose an idiot. Situations vary, but the vast
majority were FAR from any danger (much less near an inferno).

"Evacuating a million people is the exact right thing to do rather than lose
lives." Based on what? Look at the map I linked. Why not force 2 million
from their non-endangered homes? Why not the whole county? Note that of the
5 people who died, there was one "idiot" (tried to save his home), and 4 old
people who died as a result of the needless upheaval. Both extremes have
costs.

What was ACTUALLY needed was water drops (like they had in LA from the
beginning), and many more reserve firemen. This exact same thing happened
just 4 years ago, and it's certain to happen again soon. It seems they spent
all their money on the database to evac the world, and none training
volunteer/reserve firemen. There's no sense in that.

Aside from the overreaction in forcing evacuations, and the vilifying of
people who would reasonably try to protect their home (now outlawed), the
real problem is that the groupthink that carries these overreactions eagerly
buries the vast lack of actually addressing the real problems. Way too much
reactionary evacuating, and way too little putting out fires. There's wasn't
even anyone left to piece together a picture of where the fires were
raging/threatening! Info is still very sketchy.

Greg