Quote of the day:

A little neglect may breed great mischief.
—Benjamin Franklin

In 2018 California suffered its worst wildfire in history. 

Lizzie Johnson detailed the events in her 2021 non-fiction book Paradise: One Town’s Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire.

One section of that book has been developed into a gripping and emotionally intense motion picture, The Lost Bus, which you can now find on Apple TV+.

It’s based on bus driver Kevin McKay trying to navigate a bus carrying 22 children and their teachers through that wildfire to safety when all lines of communication have been cut off and their original destination has become a blazing inferno. Kevin has been having a pretty rough day already with family problems involving his son who seems to hate him, his ex-wife who clearly does, and his invalid mother. His decision to pick up the children because his was the closest bus to their location weighs on him as he has no idea if his mother and son have been able to find their way to safety.

For a more detailed review of the film, check out The Moya View blog.

Matthew McConaughey stars as Kevin McKay, and America Ferrera as Mary Ludwig, one of the teachers on the bus (the other teacher isn’t portrayed as she did not want to be included). The small roles of Kevin’s son and mother are taken by McConaughey’s real life son and mother, as he revealed on a recent Graham Norton Show.

At the end of the film we find out what happened to the principals in the story and that the fire was caused by years of negligence by Pacific Gas and Electric Company. PG&E ended up pleading guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter for the people who died in the blaze and they made a settlement of $13.5 billion for the victims.

But none of the executives of PG&E went to prison.

In general I’m opposed to prison sentences except for those who are a continuing danger or menace to the community, but I think that applies to executives of large companies that are screwing us over. If they want to collect those multi-million dollar paychecks, there ought to be consequences when they screw up.

Until we start making an example of these creeps, they’re going to keep on literally getting away with murder.