Posted On: October 24, 2007, 3:49 pm CDT

Posted By: Californian

To those of us now living in California, I agree, it is time to recover, fix what we can, and move on. To those who want to say "we should have known about it and planned ahead," what words do you have for every other part of the country when a disaster hits..."gee - should have known that was coming." Heck, no one should live in Florida, we know hurricanes are coming. Can't live in the states of OK, MO, KS because of tornados and hail. Oh shoot, that's pretty much all of the midwest. Can't they just build more sturdy houses and better roofs?

And since I recently saw those tragic floods in Ohio occur, I will repeat myself, why weren't they better prepared with better levees? No - actually I'm NOT going to ask that because the cost and reality is too much and unrealistic to expect. Mother nature has more resources than we do when it comes to CAT management. I didn't question the fine people of Ohio who chose to live on (or near) a river that is expected to flood every xx years. (Hence the flood plains and why we have flood insurance.)

I think people are missing the point that MANY homes were saved due to forward thinking and building home with concrete roofs and making sure brush was away from there home. But sorry that a fire that is more than a couple miles wide and burning completely out of control decided to ignore the building code and engulfed everything in its path.

Only two (that I know of) died in this tragic event. That is saying a lot for the preparedness of the Californians for PROPER evacuation and people who listened AND obviously knew what to do. Over 500,000 people evacuating...not an easy thing to do!

My guess is we are ALL in the insurance business, and guess what, the reality is, most of the money for home insurance is for CAT and weather management, not on the every day fires and thefts.

Just my .02 cents