Contrary to the BBC news reports yesterday that the California wildfires have been brought under control, only Malibu, the area inhabited by the Hollywood “greats,” is actually being contained. In the meantime, the majority of fires which have so far consumed  650 square miles, 1600 homes and 6 lives, continue to rage.

Yesterday, Arnie held a press conference to slap the backs of the firefighters for doing a great job. I’m certain they are doing the best they can, with the limited resources they have left, after the looting of California’s fire fighting and prevention infrastructure by Arnie on the advice of his puppetmaster, George Schultz. That darned budget deficit.

On the 12th of October, a few days before the fires were started, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, laid-off all of their 1,400 seasonal firefighters. The layoffs were ordered because the State of California had declared the official end to the fire season. After the firestorms began, the State rescinded the fire season declaration, allowing CalFire to hire back the seasonal firefighters. Patti Roberts, spokeswoman for the Governor’s office of Emergency Services, told MSNBC on Tuesday afternoon, “I can’t say that they have all been rehired, but they can be rehired.”

The Governator obviously enjoys watching the fires. Maybe he’s invited his friends round for a barbecue.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 26th, 2007 at 9:17 am and is filed under Infrastructure, Politics, USA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.