Community Meeting, Tularcitos School, Carmel Valley Village...

July 15, 2008, about 9:30 pm...

Just finished the audio from tonight's meeting at Tularcitos School in Carmel Valley Village and I uploaded it to KUSP. It's available now by clicking here.

If you click here you can listen to an interview with Rick Hutchinson, Cal Fire, Assistant Chief of Operations, Unified Command. 

Here's a link to the phone interview that KUSP's Deanna Zachary did with me at home in Jamesburg, on today's "talk of the Bay." It's about the last 15 minutes of the show, starting at 36:21 and running to the end. Prior to my interview, Deanna interviews Kirk Gafill, General Manager of Nepenthe restaurant.

If you're having trouble with the audio of the interview with Rick Hutchinson, here are the main things to know:

• At Anastasia Canyon, bulldozers constructed contingency lines form which to fall back and from which to backfire. They are halfway down the hill... where the timber stops and the brush begins. They are holding here and they've part of the backburning done.

• The UC is projecting - if the weather holds and the line is secure - somewhere around 2 or 3 days before the Mandatory Evacuation and road closures are lifted along Tassajara Road and Carmel Valley Road.
  

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Some big changes for Eaton's Pastures come the morrow...

Spike Camp at Carmel Valley Airport will break and move to the Carmel Valley Road - Tassajara Road intersection in Eaton's pastures on Wednesday, the 16th... 

So, Jamesburg and Cachagua, be prepared for a LOT of heavy vehicle traffic and some fire crews to which one may go visit and offer thanks and goodies, once the Mandatory Evacuation Notice is lifted and travel is unrestricted.

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Interesting comments from officials at the meeting...

• Chief Sidney Reade mentioned that, by law, the job of managing evacuations falls to law enforcement agencies.
  
• IC Jerry McGowan alluded to the notion that the biggest reason for imposing the Mandatory Evacuation Notice has been to ensure safe and unfettered passage of firefighting assets along a system of narrow and windy roads.

To me, this suggests that some of the ways to alleviate the problems that we've seen, from management (Unified Command) point of view could be a simple as:

1. When upgrading Evacuation Notices from Voluntary to Mandatory and closing roads, provide time - if safety permits - for sufficient notice (12 - 24 hours?) to allow families with workers away from home at work in their profession, time to return, reunite with their families and elect to evacuate or shelter/defend in place.
2. When a distinction can be made between Mandatory Evacuation due to direct and immediate threat of overrun by wildfire fire...versus reduced threat, but a definite need on the part of the Unified Command for exclusive rights of passage on a road, then traffic management - road closure for a few hours when crews and equipment are moved from Fire Camp to the fire lines - is preferable to Mandatory Evacuation and extended road closure. This is still a job that can be done by law enforcement agencies, and done well.

That said, there is still no excuse for impolite, abusive or rude behavior on the part of residents or law enforcement officials.

For my part, I've had nothing but courteous and reasonable interactions on five occasions - four with CHP officers and once with MoCo Sheriff's Deputies. But, I know others of us have scraped past the authorities like the Titanic against an iceberg. These kinds of issues are not soluble through policy decisions.

They are best dealt with by all of the parties involved behaving in the spirit of The Golden Rule.

And, that, my fellow residents is today's message from your local "Dear Abby"....

To view the enlarged version of this cartoon, click on this link. It appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle for Sunday July 13, 2008 in the funny papers. It was done by Tom Meyer, and I have absolutely no right to show an image of it here.

So, my apologies and a ritual falling-on-my-sword to the The Chron and to Tom for such a wantonly egregious action. But, since we're all cooped up here on the mountain, I kinda think that a l'il laff is worth the risk.

Thanks, to Denise Kocek and Susan Goldstein for passing along this link!