While it would have to be "large" for a "mega fire," there are a lot of small and inexpensive things you can do to help protect your home. Things like removing any shurbs around your house are very useful. Won't necessarily save your house, but it's a good start.
Well you're not wrong actually. The Forest Service took over fire management for most of the country in the early 1900's (1910 I think?) and did what fire fighters do best - put fires out. Today we understand that just putting the fire out isn't always the best long term course of action though...
I will say that we are seeing hotter and drier fire seasons than before. While this isn't entirely a result of the lack of moisture, it definitely doesn't help.
Yes it is, and it's actually pretty easy. There are many ways to reduce the chance of a fire hitting your actual living structure and out west there actually are landscaping firms that specialize in doing that. Unfortunately many older homes/properties aren't set up for this so that's when it can get expensive.
Source: I'm a wildland fire fighter. Have seen awesome and terrible uses of fireproofing property.
I just hope they make it more real documentary style like "The Internet's Own Boy as opposed to stupid and dumbed down like the Steve Jobs movie. No matter where you fall on the legal/ethical spectrum, you have to admit it's an awesome story.
Because the Dems have been so much "better" or at least more advanced than Republican for as long as anyone can remember the entire Democratic infrastructure is so much more built up than the Republican. Good and bad at the same time though. There are a lot of really good Democratic firms and freelancers but there are also a few really good Republican firms and a lot of not so good one.
For example the Democratic field has some really great players in it like Bully Pulpit Interactive, Blue State Digital, NGP VAN, Wide Eye Creative, Target Smart etc... The Republican field has less but still some good ones like i360, Targeted Victory, Push Digital, NationBuilder, etc.
tl;dr - D's have more and historically better firms. R's have less total firms but this cycle we could maybe see them on an equal (possibly better? probably not, but possible) level as D's.
I would assume they made the video internally, but I have no idea. If a firm did it then they'll probably be locked up with a lot of Hillary work this cycle so they don't need to promote themselves.
Those types of videos aren't cheap by any means. That being said I think it was done really well -- especially in comparison to announcement videos like Rubio's[0], which is a mess of random clips pasted together.
FWIW, Dems seem to be outsourcing their digital needs more than Republicans. Looks like Bernie Sanders is with Wide Eye Creative and Martin O'Malley is with Blue State Digital. Potentially because there are many, many more successful Dem web firms (including one I work for lol) than there are Republican counter parts... Not sure though, just an interesting data point.
Have you thought about adding fields for design/consulting firm and CRM? Looks like Hillary is on Salesforce and Cruz is using (and probably overpaying) for Marketo.
The consultants are almost more interesting if you know the industry though. It looks like all the candidates built their sites internally, except for Rubio who is using Push Digital. Will be interesting to see which strategy works better.