By Paul Losch
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About this blog: I was a "corporate brat" growing up and lived in different parts of the country, ending in Houston, Texas for high school. After attending college at UC Davis, and getting an MBA at Harvard, I embarked on a marketing career, mai...
(More)About this blog: I was a "corporate brat" growing up and lived in different parts of the country, ending in Houston, Texas for high school. After attending college at UC Davis, and getting an MBA at Harvard, I embarked on a marketing career, mainly in the Bay Area with different companies. My former wife went back to medical school after we had been married a few years, and we moved into married student housing at Stanford, had our two now adult children while she was a medical student, and moved into Palo Alto when she started her Residency. Been here ever since. As my kids were going through the Palo Alto schools, I was actively involved in their activities, most notably head umpire for Palo Alto Little League and 9 years as a member of the Parks and Recreation Commission, among other activities. My kids both are grown, my son teaches 5th grade locally, and my daughter, fluent in Mandarin, is working in China. I sold the business I owned and ran for 8 years in 2012, worked on the Obama campaign, and am consulting for non-profit organizations, which gives me a nice, flexible schedule. Lots of stamps in my passport, and for fun, I like live performances &emdash; theater and music - and of course the Giants!
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We now are officially in a drought.
We lost two homes and two local citizens this past week due to house fires.
There is an ugly fire Southern California right now, the likes of which usually occur in the summer months.
I think we are in for a tough year, water-wise and fire-wise.
We all need to take a measured approach to our water consumption. That is an individual responsibility that collectively makes a huge difference.
Our community needs to support our firefighters in these times. Their work is tough under normal circumstances. As I see it, the fire department will potentially face a very challenging year.
There is a great deal of parkland and open space that is part of Palo Alto which could become a pariah under the wrong circumstances. What happens in residential and commercial spaces is less predictable, and the two incidents this past week may or may not be repeated again.
PA firefighters also help our neighboring communities when needed, as do other fire companies for Palo Alto.
The fire department does a great deal of work pro-actively to deter fires from happening, something that is largely invisible to the public. They have their work cut out for them this year, and it is only January.
I pray for rain and a safe fire season, hope springs eternal. But we need a fully staffed fire department to help make sure the risk is minimized.
