Page 7 - Sonoma County Gazette December 2017

By Mazher Mir
What good can ever come from a call at 2 A.M. in the morning!
If all the local leaders and legislatures work together as they did during this crisis, we should have a robust advancement of infrastructures auxiliary to handle emergency situations. This will enable us to also build many permanent shelters primarily for our local citizens but also for the people of neighboring counties in any such need. I am not proposing for any exotic city buildings in our suburbs be created, but something environmentally sound and postmodern.
The night of October 9th, I went to bed after hearing the media noise over the possibilities of nuclear attack reaching California from North Korea. Like many other Santa Rosans, the frantic call to run for your life, strong burning smells, sirens, blasting sounds of electrical transformers and observing the frenzied glowing sky from the Tubb re, I was
We can build our houses with better technologies based on more research and understandings of the regional conditions that have and could potentially a ect us. We have great universities and research facilities in the bay area that should
thinking” Is this really happening!” The furious restorm ran rampant through our heavenly beautiful wine
be invited to understand the weather patterns, air, and water quality and perhaps our Sonoma State University can be a hub for such projects. Catastrophic events are beyond pricing and we can recover from it well if we generously mitigate with the re victims (with least amount
country in just a few hours. All of
us had to surrender to a week-long
wild re which took a serious toll on
our lives and will continue to. Even
though there is nothing good we can
expect from this incident, we have
found ourselves to be a very close and
strong community. We are very lucky
that our local economy has always
been sound and jointly we have
created a great champion community.
However, we were never prepared to handle such a calamitous situation. Our local, state and federal government e ciently worked together to minimize the casualties and other losses with the outstanding support from 18 other states and two friendly countries, Australia and New Zealand.
of griefs) and engage our people to bigger improvements.
Recently at a re recovery workshop in Rohnert Park, organized by Classaction.com, the city mayor Mr. Jack Mackenzie alerted us that we should not put our guards down at the end of this particular disaster and to always
be prepared to tackle any future incidents. Most of us from the Santa Rosa area can remember the unexpected tornado that we had in 2011. A dry condition
or any electrical sparks could have turned that into a similar disaster too. Our community now has a rsthand experience in thriving through a massive crisis. We should now put our familiarities and resources to turn this catastrophe into a turning point to better us.
if we prepare the whole community to better ght any disaster? Most likely not. We have abundant educated people and entrepreneurs here to actually form a re insurance company locally that can fully support and serve our needs e ciently. This pro table business can then support the expansion of our regional re departments and possibly create a much bigger emergency response team prepared to tackle disasters or any unforeseen civil unrest.
Kudos to our Sonoma County Sheri ’s Department to subdue rumors over arsonist that could have seriously harmed our citizens and distracted us from dealing with raging wild res. With a self-su cient and strong community, we should experience positive migration coming from many parts of the country that is essential for any sustainable economic growth. As a parent of three children, we are always eager to know the best place in the USA to raise a family. Sonoma County assured me that we are in the right place.
From the workshop, we have learned that it’s no secret that insurance companies will essentially increase the re premiums on us. Would they reduce the premium
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