IT IS the role Arnold Schwarzenegger was born to play – “the governator”,
striding tall against a scarlet sky, cheering on heroic firefighters,
comforting the dispossessed with a fresh twist on his worn catchphrase:
“I’ll be back – with money.”
The unlikely story of an Austrian bodybuilder turned Hollywood star who was
elected governor of the sixth-biggest economy in the world reached its
apogee last week as he shepherded President George W Bush around the
smouldering ruins of southern California and appeared more presidential.
Physically, the Austrian Oak, 60, has been shrinking. He is noticeably shorter
than the 6ft 2in steroid-enhanced hulk who won all the top body beautiful
competitions in the 1970s. But politically he has never been more popular or
powerful in his adopted homeland.
From the media-saturated moment last Monday when the devout Catholic
politician visited a burnt-out Presbyterian church in Malibu, an early
casualty of the bushfires that continue to burn across southern California
this weekend, Schwarzenegger has been in the public gaze 15 hours a day.
He has played cheerleader to weary firefighters dancing around 100mph gusts of
flame, children’s entertainer as he greeted refugees taking shelter in a San
Diego football stadium and, perhaps most importantly, guide and hustler for
government aid to an array of visiting Washington officials.
“This is real-life drama,” said Rob Schultzman, the governor’s former
communications director. “This is what all the bodybuilding and the movies
prepared him for – a confidence that makes him more comfortable than the
average politician in the middle of a real-life nightmare.”
“The governor is the optimistic larger-than-life figure people want to see
coming over the hill when all seems lost,” said another former aide.
“Sometimes he is far happier on the ground, with chaos all around him, than
in his office surrounded by snakes in suits. Maybe it reminds him of a film
set, but he seems to grow a few inches during a crisis.”
The governor has acknowledged this himself. “I know action, this is what it’s
all about. I am a hands-on kind of guy who wants to get around and do these
things,” he said in his distinct Austrian-Californian tones.
According to insiders, he has also made significant decisions away from the
public gaze at dawn briefings with emergency co-ordinators: “Republican
governors have diverted firemen to protect richer areas first, but he said
safe firefighting was his priority, so some rich palaces have burnt,” said
an impressed official from the firemen’s union.
“This is maybe why we have lost only one fireman so far, compared with five
outside Palm Springs last year and 22 in San Diego in 2003,” he added.
“Considering the intensity and spread of the fires, the low mortality rate
[seven deaths at last count] is amazing.”
Schwarzenegger brushed aside reporters’ comparisons with the feeble White
House response to Hurricane Katrina two years ago, but he did promote the
message that the Californian government cares: “I have personally made the
calls for cots [camp beds] and food and water. I am listening to what people
want. I am governor and I will make it so.”
Compared with New Orleans, the relative wealth spent on Californian evacuation
drills and a taste for 4x4 cars big enough to carry entire household
treasures have paid off.
Looting has been minimal – mostly illegal immigrants stealing food and rowdy
teenagers snatching beer. More serious are the arsonists, now being hunted
by the FBI. “We don’t have to understand why they do it, we only need to
catch them,” said an FBI spokesman.
The governor even reached out to foreigners. He thanked the Canadians who sent
water-carrying aircraft, when bureaucratic infighting and high winds had
grounded the state’s own fleet. He praised the Mexican city of Tijuana which
dispatched fire engines across the border to San Diego, a city that despite
regular autumnal blazes does not have its own regional fire brigade.
He has been called presidential, but can never hold that office because of a
constitutional ban on foreign-born presidents, originally drawn up to
prevent King George III returning after the revolution. But a private straw
poll taken last Thursday gave Schwarzenegger a 70% approval rating, twice as
high as Bush, setting him up for a promising run for the US Senate in 2010,
when term-limits end his governorship.
This weekend Schwarzenegger is expected to return to the woods of Lake
Arrowhead, east of Los Angeles, where the state’s 9,000 firefighters, 3,000
of them prisoners seeking time off for good behaviour, are converging.
The San Diego football stadium and school gyms have finally emptied as 750,000
people, equivalent to the population of the city of San Francisco, return
home. Many spent the past week dialling their answering machines: if they
took messages, the house was still standing. Nearly 2,000 homes and £500m
worth of property have gone up in smoke.
In Malibu, the site of the first of the blazes fanned by the hot Santa Ana
winds, Hollywood stars have dispatched servants to investigate the damage.
One of the first victims was Sean Penn, the actor-director, who was in Italy
promoting his film about the glories of nature called Into the Wild when
flames devoured his luxury caravan.
The hillside “double wide” trailer, Penn’s primary residence since a fire
gutted his nearby house in 1993, was later visited by executives from CAA,
his talent agency, wondering how to tell their volatile star that the only
piece of furniture remaining was a skeletal beach umbrella.
The summer homes of Olivia Newton-John and Sting, the singers, James Cameron,
the director of Titanic, and Bill Murray and Kelsey Grammer, the actors,
were evacuated. A local landmark, Castle Kashan, owned by Lily Lawrence, the
Iranian social-ite, was burnt.
James Keach, husband of Jane Seymour, the British star, ignored the mandatory
evacuation orders to dampen down brush near their home, Seymour said.
Only a handful of Malibu homes were destroyed.
Locals say that they enjoy four seasons – earthquake, mud-slide, riot and,
every autumn, Santa Ana fires. Some, like former resident Mike Davis,
history professor at the University of California, Irvine, argue that it
might be wiser to let the multi-million-dollar mansions burn and build
elsewhere.
Schwarzenegger, whose own compound in west Los Angeles is in a constant flux
of expansion and remodelling, would have none of such defeatist talk. “We
shall rebuild bigger and better and safer than ever, and Washington will
help pay for it. That is our way,” he said.
Bad air day
California residents hoping for a return to normal after a week of wildfires
were being hampered by severely polluted air yesterday. Warnings were given
that children and the elderly should stay indoors in several parts of the
state.
During the fires residents protected themselves with industrial masks, and in
the aftermath some were turning to surgical masks to avoid inhaling soot and
dust hanging over the San Bernardino mountains, parts of Orange County and
around San Diego.
“In the immediate aftermath of a fire we’re all at risk from the fine
particulate matter in the air,” said a spokeswoman for Breathe LA, which
monitors smog in Los Angeles. Past wildfires have led to increases in cases
of asthma, pneumonia, bronchitis and heart attacks.
A drop in the winds helped firemen bring blazes under control, but smoke was
dispersing more slowly.
California wildfires - links
Governor of California webpage : Arnold
Schwarzenegger (includes videos of Schwarzenegger visiting evacuees)
Fire updates from California Department
of Forestry and Fire Protection:
NASA Satellite Images of
California Wildfires, October 24, 2007
the man is a threat to firefighters - he is driven by his own hot air.
richard wright , Boston, USA