Fearless Travel

To break with the general tone of this blog for a moment in order to make an appeal to my readers.

Many of you may have been aware of the recent wild fires in California. In fact one of those fires, the “Tea Fire,” hit near the last city I lived in and harmed some people I knew. Here’s the story. Lance and Carla were recently married. She works as a manager at the comic book store and he works as a security guard at a mall down the street. They were renting a bungalo in a town called Montecito. They had received the evacuation notice and were gathering some small belongings when they noticed the fire was moving very quickly towards them. They ran for the car, but were overtaken in a flash fire and burned horribly. Somehow they managed to drive themselves to the nearest fire station where some paramedics were present (luckily) who then transported them to the nearest hospital. Their burns were so severe they were transferred to UC Irvine’s hospital and put into a medically-induced coma while their burns heal. Lance’s burns are so severe, the doctors fear he may have burns on the insides of his lungs from inhaling super-heated air. They have lost everything and because they work for small companies, they have no health insurance to cover their medical expenses. They are currently being put through the medicaid system to pay for the expenses of their medical treatment and recovery. In the mean time, some other friends started a Yahoo user group to coordinate donations of clothes, furniture, gift cards and other things they will need once they get out - they are trying to avoid taking cash donations in order to prevent Lance and Carla’s disqualification for medicaid since those monies would be considered an asset under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (this provision allows the state to confiscate savings, trusts, and other liquid assets to offset the cost of medicaid). Please check out the user group and see if you can help in any way.

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/lanceandcarla/

Hopefully, we’ll all figure out a way to help Lance and Carla soon. Thank you for your patience and assistance while reading this.

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