Watch your own ass

I have in-laws caught up in the raging inferno that is Southern California. They live in Orange County in a town that isn't immediately threatened by the fires, but which is close to areas that are. Talking to them and wishing them the best, I can't help but react the same way that I did to the news that came out after Hurricane Katrina: Relying on other people to protect your life and your property is a losing game.

The "other people" we're most often expected to rely on these days in situations like the one in California are the folks in the various agencies of government and insurance companies. The government extracts taxes from us and makes broad promises about the protective services it will provide in return to shield us from harm. Insurance companies take our premiums in return for assurances that they'll make us whole if the worst does happen. But both have their limitations.

Governments, at best, have conflicting priorities. Government officials are good at making promises and at collecting taxes, but they use the resources they gather for the purposes that suit them. Fire protection is promised and, to a certain extent, delivered. But even after years of warnings, the protection is suited only to day-to-day demands -- a level of service sufficient to avoid pissing off voters, but not to meet emergencies. For example, former FEMA chief Michael Brown told interviewers:

"The White House needs to recognize that we are overstretched. They need to increase the size of the regular Army and stop relying so much on the National Guard. ..."

"FEMA's job is to pick up the phone and call another Governor and say 'Hey California is short on National Guard, can you spare a few?' but you can call any Governor in the country and everybody is stretched."

Insurance companies are better at staying on-mission, but they don't really exist to pay claims. Instead, they exist to gamble on not paying out claims; they pay if they lose that gamble. Massive disasters mean that they really lose -- and before they can honor a tidal wave of claims, you can expect significant delay and a lot of scrambling.

At least insurance companies have a sense of reality; they charge higher premiums when there are higher risks, and refuse to offer insurance when the risks are entirely too high to make it a sensible gamble. That's a sure sign to the people seeking insurance that they may be getting in over their heads.

As with so many things though, governments are capable of making a bad situation worse. Senator Dianne Feinstein is upset that, in arid, tinder-box Southern California, some people can't get fire insurance for their homes. Rather than take that as further evidence, in the midst of smoking ruins, that fire in some places is a greater risk than can safely be insured against, she proposes a taxpayer-subsidized scheme to offer insurance that professional insurers refuse to underwrite. That can only encourage people to continue to build in high-risk areas, setting the ground for future fire seasons to be dealt with, again, by inadequate, inappropriately allocated government resources. The inevitable result will be more destroyed lives and homes.

That's right -- more promises not worth relying on.

Really, the only provisions that people can count on are the ones they make for themselves. Insurance might be part of the package -- and government services that we're forced to pay for are part of the deal whether we want them or not. But completely relying on promises of protection ... well, ask the Californians with the smoking craters where their houses used to be how that worked out.

That doesn't mean we all have to be our own cops, fire departments, insurance companies and whatever else may come to mind, but it does mean that we all need to prepare for the worst and be ready to face it on our own terms.