Realizing that this is a journal focused exclusively on the Central Valley of California, it would be remiss of ValleyVue to completely ignore the unprecedented disaster now facing the state. No, the Valley itself is not afflicted by fire. Even the smoke seems to be headed out to sea. However, as often as Californians have talked about dividing the state between north and south, there is unity in understanding this crisis. Besides, northerners can identify, having just had a similar, yet smaller-scale, destructive forest fire near Lake Tahoe. Californians know these fires will affect the whole state in many ways for a long time. The Valley, separated more by name of river (Sacramento vs. San Joaquin), more than any physical boundary, stretches and belongs to both southern and northern California.

Tragically, the fires now occurring near San Diego and Los Angeles have resulted in a huge number of displaced Californians. CNN was reporting that close to a million people have been evacuated. The first of the major fires shocked the state by burning through Malibu and causing evacuations at Pepperdine University. The next day, it seemed, fires had sprung up in the community around Lake Arrowhead and down toward the Mexican border. Thousands of structures have been destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of acres have burned, and the fires are not yet under control.

A million people displaced, thousands of those with no homes to return to, will cause some movement of the population. Will people return to rebuild as soon as possible? What kind of infrastructure has been destroyed that must be replaced even for homes that haven't burned? Is there anything we can do to avoid these disasters in the future? Unfortunately, at this point, these questions must go unanswered. First and foremost, containment must be reached and the evacuees must be cared for. This disaster is not over yet.