Now I want to start this week by saying congratulations are in order — Vancouver has a new fire chief, John Drake II, who came to us through what I am told was a nationwide search, and I think that is worth saying out loud because a nationwide search means they looked everywhere and still picked someone to lead our department, and that is not nothing — and I remember when Chief Blue started, or I think I do, it was one of those things where the city made an announcement and you saw it in the paper and felt like someone was minding the store, and thirty-eight years is a long time to mind a store, so whoever is stepping into that role has very large boots to fill, and I mean that literally and also as a figure of speech — and I hope the new chief gets a proper introduction to the people who actually live here, not just a press release, because there is a difference.
But I have to tell you what is really on my mind this week, and it is the measles, and before you roll your eyes I need you to sit with me for a moment — six more cases confirmed in Clark County, all connected back to that first case from January, and health officials are saying the new exposures happened in non-public locations, which I understand is meant to be reassuring, but what it actually does is make me think about every potluck and every indoor gathering and every time someone said "oh I'm sure it's just a cold" — and I will tell you something, I grew up when measles was not a historical curiosity, it was a thing that happened, it was a thing that spread through a school in a week, and I watched it happen, and the reason we all stopped worrying about it was because enough of us did the right thing for long enough that it became a memory, and memories apparently have a shorter shelf life than I thought — and I am not pointing fingers at any specific situation or any specific decision being made in any specific household, you know who you are, I am simply noting that six cases connected to one case is not a trend that moves in a comfortable direction.
And this brings me to something I keep coming back to, which is the question of how and when people are told things — because I read that Clark County was not notified about the hospital escape situation until the afternoon after it happened, and I understand that is a separate matter and a separate set of agencies involved, but it made me think about the gap between something happening and the people who actually live here finding out about it, and that gap is the thing that makes people anxious, it is the thing that erodes whatever trust got built up over years — and I remember when the notification systems in this county were a whole conversation, there were meetings, there were people who cared very loudly about it, and I wonder sometimes where that energy went — and I suppose what I am saying is that whether it is a health situation or a fire department leadership transition or anything else, the communication is the part that sticks, it is the part people remember, and we have not always gotten that part right, and I am being generous with "we" there — and I have more to say about all of this but I am running up against my column length and the measles situation is still unresolved and I think about that.
That's all for this week. You know where to find me.