I heard this morning from Congressman Lloyd Doggett that President had signed a disaster declaration for the burning counties in Texas. Now I see that this is definite as discussed in this article in the Chron.
Now Governor Rick “Fed Up” Perry and Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst can finally stop their whining. And the Senate-hopeful Lieutenant Governor can stop trying to reap political capital on the backs of now-homeless Texans.
But I wonder where is Eric Cantor in all of this? Aren’t we supposed to pay for this federal aid somehow? Maybe we should defund NOAA. Maybe paying for all those prescription drugs to keep our aging society out of the grave needs to be reconsidered. They’re really old, you know, and don’t pay any taxes.
One thing I am sure of, though. It is very probable that Rick Perry didn’t pray to Jesus for the President to sign the declaration. Because we know very well what happens when Rick Perry prays to Jesus for anything. Like the last time Rick Perry prayed to Jesus for Him to bring rain, Texas caught fire instead.
Now if it weren’t for the fact that thousands of families in BastropCounty – and elsewhere – have been burned out of their houses I would be laughing aloud over this. Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst has sent not one, but two letters to President Obama asking that the burning counties in Texas be declared a disaster area.
Thus qualifying Texas for federal assistance.
Like taxpayer dollars.
Dewhurst sent the 2nd letter because he says that there has been no reply from President Obama.
"Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who attended the briefing, said that he wrote a second letter today to President Barack Obama, asking for aid. An earlier one was not answered, he said."
Dewhurst is obviously ignorant of the fact that there is a process and the President has people who handle this and make recommendations to him. Then he declares disaster areas.
Either that, or, more plausibly, David Dewhurst is trying to make political capital over the misfortunes of Texas homeowners who have lost everything in these fires.
He’s running for Senate, you know.
There is nothing lower than someone who tries to grab the microphone for a publicity moment my standing on the shoulders of these poor unfortunate ones. Not even a snake in a ditch is lower than that.
Now on the one hand, there is not a whole lot that a Texas governor can do when unusually hot dry winds whip and fires start and get fanned. A Texas governor can’t for instance, man a hose or drop fire retardant chemicals from the air.
He really has no personal expertise in directing a battle against a wall of flames burning everything in sight in Bastrop, Texas. Just about the only thing he can do is beseech the Lord God to send rain, something that hasn’t worked out very well in the past.
But when the fires started here in Texas this weekend, Rick Perry was busy trying to look presidential in South Carolina. He was on the stump in South Carolina while Bastrop burned to the ground. And yes, while there is not a whole lot that he can personally do, it doesn’t look well in the eyes of voters to ignore a natural disaster in your own state while trying out for a federal job in DC.
So Rick Perry is leaving the campaign for a bit. He even gave up an opportunity to participate in a candidate’s forum and give voters a preview of his speechifying on the same platform as Mitt Romney. And you know, it might just be my opinion, but I suspect that Perry is probably a little relieved that he doesn’t have to make that forum. He spent half of 2010 avoiding being in the same television studio with Bill White after all.
So this massive fire and property loss in Texas is working out all right for Rick Perry.
Last month when 10,000 Harris County voting machines went up in flames, along with all the ancillary equipment needed to run an eSlate polling place, my first suspicion was that someone wanted to discourage voters from casting their ballots in the mid-term elections, and torched the warehouse.
And now, nearly a month later, it seems that Harris County arson investigators have failed to find an accelerant. An accelerant is any trace of a substance, like gasoline or other flammable substances that could rapidly spread a set fire at a rate that would overwhelm any automatic fire extinguishing measures present in the building.
“On Thursday, Arson Chief Gabe Cortez said they have found no evidence an accelerant, such as gasoline, was used in the fire.”
“‘We will examine some of the items recovered microscopically and with X-rays, and have electrical engineers look at those,’ Cortez said.”
Now in my brief research on the subject I have found that in any given arson investigation, when no trace of an accelerant is found at the site of a fire, the immediate diagnosis is that the fire was caused either by an electrical fault, a leak in a gas line, or “spontaneous combustion” – the latter being the rare case of combustion of a pile of organic material which is undergoing decomposition.
So absent an accelerant or multiple points of ignition, investigation of the cause of a fire shifts toward accidental.
Except in this case. In this case no accelerant has been found, yet arson has not yet been ruled out. And I have to wonder why.
Could it be the thing that keeps nagging at me? That the timing and opportunity is such an obvious factor? That who stands the most to gain in an “accident” of this nature foils any conclusion? And more to the point, if there is a rush to judgment on the cause of the fire, that it was simply an accident caused by an electrical fault, will that not raise some eyebrows in the Justice Department?
That is, if at this point the cause of a fire at a warehouse containing parts for Toyota automobiles has not yet been determined as being set deliberately with an accelerant, my guess is that the whole investigation would lead to conclude that the fault was in the wiring and the case is closed.
But burning up water pumps and ignition coils doesn’t affect an entire statewide election, does it? Harris County contains the highest number of voters, Democratic leaning voters, in the state. A fire at the warehouse containing all voting machines in the county is just a little bit more suspicious.
And really, absent the finding of the presence of an accelerant does not alone mean that the fire was due to an electrical fault. That only means that the accelerant could not be detected.
In truth, even if someone comes up with a blackened electrical junction box with melted wires in it, given the “external evidence” of motive, who stands most to gain from this fire, you will never be able to convince me that this wasn’t a purposefully set fire.
I think I have mentioned before that I am not from around here. I am a California transplant. People sometimes ask me since I once lived in /California what am I doing here in Texas?
My stock answer: That’s a question that I often ask myself.
Truth is, it’s not all that bad here in the Texas Gulf Coastal plain. The weather sucks about 3/4ths of the time, though. People tell me, but have you looked outside today? There’s gorgeous weather outside today.
My stock answer: It’s like this 300 days a year in California.
But not these days. The past couple of days Texas has had it over California weather wise.
It’s this way every year at this time. They’re called the Santa Ana winds, and the weather pattern is called a Santa Ana condition.
No one really knows where the name came from. Santa Ana is a bedroom community in Southern California but there is nothing special about winds there. The website I found on the subject, here, suggests it comes from Santa Ana Canyon, one of the San Gabriel Mountain canyons that funnel these winds into LA. And there may be some truth to that, but there is also a school of thought that the actual name is Santana.
What happens is that a high pressure area forms in the California eastern desert and this produces a pressure gradient that sends winds through narrow canyons in the central and coastal mountain ranges. Friction heats up the wind as it finds itself trying to get through smaller and smaller pathways, and wind velocity builds for the same reason. The result is hot dry winds that turn everything in sight into tinder.
And all that needs to happen is a spark. Quite often the spark is from a cigarette. Sometimes fires are intentionally set by crazies. What typically happens is several fires break out naturally, then several more fires are set intentinally. The result is a fiery maelstrom. Separate fires have been known to join to make one big fire.
For most California residents, the fires that are fanned by the Santa Ana winds are mere inconveniences. But if you have a house in the foothills, the chances are high that you will be directly affected. And this, by the way, is one paradox that always sets some people on edge: if you lose your home in a fire, say a home in the hills above Malibu, and the Governor declares a disaster area (as he did), you qualify for low interest loans to rebuild your house. A paradox because if you have a house in the hills of Malibu you are already as rich as Croesus.
But the fire disaster is only the beginning. Say your house was saved by fire fighters from destruction. Now you have the long winter to look forward to. When fires strip the brush off the hillsides (brush commonly called chaparral), and it starts to rain, the soil has no plants to serve as anchors, and you get horrendous mudslides that bowl houses over and cover their sleeping inhabitants. Roadways disappear.
All this sounds pretty bad. Why would anyone want to live in California?
Why? Because in California, it’s like it was today here in the Texas Gulf Coastal plain 300 days a year.
In case you haven’t been following this, here are a couple of You Tube videos.
This is one of a TV reporter covering the destruction of his own home. This is a first.
And last but not least, here is a satellite photo from NASA.
