Or else they owned their choice of aircraft ranging from minijets to ultralight helicopters. The skies could be hazardous over thickly populated provinces. Except for the rich enclaves like the Privilege or Paradiso Palms out in the desert or Laguna Nigel on the Pacific, the tax base of the rest of SoCal was inadequate to maintain infrastructure properly. There were brownouts and blackouts and bad water and worse sewage systems. Public schools were erratic. In some provinces police protection was subsidized and good. Fire protection throughout SoCal was excellent, a simple matter of self-preservation, financed by the wealthy with everything to lose and supported by celebrity fund-raisers. Otherwise vast areas of SoCal would have been nothing but charred stubble and we all would have choked to death on the dust raised by the Santa Anas. The SoCal Lycan population, according to statistics kept by the ILC and never made public, was creeping up to sixty percent. Out of 28 million souls. Rogue werewolves, a much smaller group, were a major headache for us and for large landowners with cattle and other livestock to protect.
