Today’s Our View is simple: The Daily Forty-Niner staff and its contributors offer their thoughts and sympathies to those affected by the Southern California wildfires in recent days. Going into a battle sure to continue weeks ahead, we ensure that good reporting, with a sensitive ear to the campus and its extended communities, will be our first priority during these difficult times.
With the fierce Santa Ana winds fanning the fire zones out of control (some at 0 percent containment), it’s hard to imagine there’s any end in sight. Satellite images show San Diego in a vice-like grip, engulfed by approaching fronts, while the firestorm moves northward to pepper the Southland from Orange County to Santa Clarita. In one of the largest evacuations in California’s history, the count of evacuees stands at 1 million as of yesterday.
Several of our own staff members have felt the fire’s impact personally.
Editor in Chief Bradley Zint’s family was evacuated from their neighborhood in San Diego and is staying in a small, family-owned motel.
Several of Sports Editor Abbey Mastracco’s friends and family members have been evacuated and can’t attend classes at universities in San Diego.
One of our copy editors, Brie Thiele, saw her Malibu apartment in a newswire photo with flames consuming the dry brush only feet behind her home.
Our main copy editor, Stephen Sabetti, had his family evacuated from San Diego as well.
The rest of us are unaffected directly, but we are affected in the sense that we are a community and our hearts go out to those whose homes have been lost, and we know that everybody on campus is feeling the effects. It is a cloud that has literally cast a pall over the Los Angeles Basin and it’s impossible to see the smoke and not wonder about the fire.
A fine layer of dust, grime and, most of all gloom, has affected students in every way. Students outside can be seen coughing and, in a very unusual way, there are no students lounging out on the grass, enjoying the sunshine. People are actually trying to get indoors, not outdoors.
The sunshine is funneled through a hazy orange smokescreen. The world just feels weird.
It has been said before that, if you want to bring people together, a tragedy would do it. So in addition to the sympathy, condolences, and the abstract impacts of dedicated reporting and readership, we at the Daily Forty-Niner encourage Cal State Long Beach students to reach out to their fellow Californians. Contact numbers are listed below to donate time and resources to the Red Cross. If you can help, please, do.
Volunteers can call the Red Cross at (310) 445-2676 or (310) 477-5785
