Fire or Rain, Pick Your Poison
This last week has been as horrific as it gets
concerning the weather. Hurricane and rain in the south, fires in the west and
it looks like the east coast might get hit with a sizeable hurricane by the end
of the week.
Susie and I were talking the other day and I asked her
what she felt is worse, hurricanes and tornado’s or fire. Tough to answer for
us. We have lived in South Texas and dealt with hurricanes & the like and
in North Texas, we dealt with tornado’s. Now that we are on the left coast, we
fret about fire for about 5-6 months out of the year.
You know the only good thing about hurricanes is you
know they are coming. Really. You seriously know they’re coming. Like 2-3 days
at least. Plenty of time to get out if needed and to somewhat prepare.
Tornados are a different breed of duck. You kind of
know they are on their way, but you really don’t get much more than a few hours
notice that they are on the way. You can’t get out of their way once they hit
and all you can do is hunker down and pray for the best. When we lived in North
Texas I traveled a 10 state territory. I can’t count the times I was in Casper,
Wyoming or Albuquerque, NM and I am stuck in my hotel watching the Weather
Channel tell me about potential tornados in Dallas. And I can’t do anything to
help…
I have been through 2 hurricanes, Camile in 1969 and
Alicia in 1983, plus countless tropical storms. Yes, the stories are true that
we have hurricane parties. Schaefer Beer was named the official Hurricane
Alicia Beer that night. Fortunately, the only inconvenience was power outage. I
was in Louisiana in 1969 and we evacuated to the school in town. Thankfully we
came back to minor tree damage and the like. No water damage or anything like
that. Same with Alicia. I had a second floor apartment and only lost power for
10 days. In August. In Texas. Could have been worse, but at the time I sweated
for a living and I didn’t feel the need to sweat 24/7.
Both hurricanes and tornados in most instances do a
ton of damage, but leave the buildings intact a lot of the time. Then people
have to deal with repairing the damaged sheet rock, the soaked carpet and the
ruined appliances. Not to mention the possibility of mold.
Fire is much different and very much alike in certain
ways. If you are affected by fire you usually don’t have much time to get out
(ie. Tornados). But the good thing about fire (if there actually is something
that can be considered acceptable) is there is little to no cleanup, because
you have nothing left to clean up in the first place.
The biggest and most important issue with me
concerning fire are the idiots who start them. Yes, I know what you are
thinking, “But Tim, lightning starts fires doesn’t it?”
Very true, but it seems that in the last several
years, the idiot theory is prevalent and being proved year in and year out.
The Rim Fire of about 4 years ago was started by a
great white hunter who felt the need to build a fire. The Courtney Fire of 2
years ago was apparently started by another braniac that decided to burn a deer
carcass. I guess they were too tired to
dig a hole and bury the deer. 30 houses destroyed and it was very close to my
home, something like 3-4 miles.
The Detwiller Fire this year burned 81,826 acres and
63 residences. I have heard target shooting attributed to this.
The death sentence for starting fires has my support.
At the very least it will help thin down the gene pool. I don’t know if it is
stupidity (number 1 on my list), ignorance or just plain ole bad luck. The
comedian Steve Martin once said that we can bring the overpopulation down by
issuing death sentences for parking violations. A little rash and humorous, but
it’s a start.
Why, oh why do people not use ash trays. These are the
same dorks that throw beer cans into the back of their trucks and miss the bed
of the truck 75% of the time. They drag chains when pulling trailers, they park
their vehicles in tall grass. “No need to douse the campfire, it’ll burn itself
out eventually.” The list is long…
I have said in the past that I will never move back to
Texas because of the weather and the problems that it brings. I’ll keep on
believing that until the next dumbass decides to toss their cigarette butt out the
car and we have to live with puckered butts until the fire is put out.
