Outrageous

Since San Diego we have traveled east to Victorville where we began this year’s work journey.  This is such an arid and dry area that they are already fighting brush fires.  We saw the smoke from one while we were there and heard about it on the news that night.

Another thing that amazed and outraged me, as a taxpayer was an entire area of military base housing formerly of George Air Force Base just left to disintegrate in the desert winds across from the Federal Prison in Victorville.  We saw it’s broken windows, graffiti covered walls and caving in roofs from the coach as we passed by the high walls surrounding the former homes.

I understand the cost/benefit argument the military probably promulgated when they left the area. The local people were left to survive on their own after years of depending upon a base-promoted good economy.  The resulting hardships are still evident.  But rather than allow these homes to disintegrate, why not give them back to the community to create if nothing else, homes for young people or the elderly who need a start in life or a place to securely end life not worrying about a roof over their heads or maybe even a mortgage before the homes reached this stage?  Well, you get my point.  Enough said.

Because I wasn't fast enough to get pictures as we passed, check out these photos and comments by another person who regrets the situation just like me by clicking here.  It is mind boggling!  Reading the comments on this site I learned even more:

"Despite its designation as a superfund site (because of ground contamination from toxic and radioactive materials like jet fuel, metals and other contaminants), it is abandoned, neglected, and becoming consumed by nature."

Learning the government left behind a contaminated site it has yet to cleanup explains why we wouldn't move our young people nor the elderly in there.  But to me it makes the site and the situation even more outrageous.

Now I'll step off my soapbox...