Mental Meanderings

Is SoCal going to be littered with FEMA trailers? The local media touted FEMA’s donation of 1,000 cots for the QualCom stadium in San Diego; however, there are more than 10,000 people on the premises, so perhaps a rotation for sleeping will be designed so the people who don’t have a cot can share with those who do?

It’s a nice gesture, and I’m sure FEMA will continue to provide more and more amenities for the displaced San Diego residents, but, at this point in time, thank God for the thousands of San Diegans who are taking care of their neighbors, bringing literally tons of donations to the people who are out of their homes and waiting to learn whether they have a home to return to when the fires are out.

The military base up the hill is taking in people from Camp Pendleton, Fallbrook, and surrounding desert communities, including the Big Bear area. They are being temporarily housed throughout the base facilities. When you have no place to call home, even a tent doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. They are being provided with food and sanitation facilities, so what more could anyone want?

What happens as the dominos begin to fall? Is the economy able to absorb this kind of disaster, or is SoCal going to be another Louisiana?

Where does all the debris go? Is there a designated place to discard the charred remnants of thousands of homes and businesses safely? Who pays to pick it up, cart it off, and dump it in an environmentally safe manner?

The utility companies suffer when thousands of accounts are closed simultaneously: gas, water, electric, cable TV, telephone, trash collection. The thousands of gardeners are suddenly unemployed, as well as the housekeepers and the shop owners who find themselves without customers to buy their goods.

Retail trades suffer as people who were spending money on clothing, recreation, electronics and other non-essentials now have to hold onto every dollar they have because not only do they have a home to rebuild, but they have to repurchase their lives. Restaurants should have a steady stream of customers: those displaced from their homes and those with no homes left.

Think of all the outstanding credit card bills for items in ashes. Think of all the mortgages, the balances due on loans for automobiles that are no longer, home equity loans on a property that is no more.

The economy will boom soon as the homes are rebuilt, the residents begin to refurnish their lives, and new cars are purchased, but for some of the victims of this disaster, it’s not just what they’ve lost, but what they have to pay for that no longer exists. Those loans and credit card bills don’t go away just because what they were used to buy no longer exists. The debt was incurred, and the person who signed the credit card receipt is going to have to pay off the debt, as well as the new debt incurred to rebuild their lives.

If everyone not affected by the fire donated $5 to a common fund, and everyone who loses a home in the fires signed up for an equal share of the pot, I wonder how much cash could be given to the victims to help them with part of the process?

The people who stood there and watched their homes go up in flames may not know it yet, but their lives were just destroyed, too.