Raging wildfires across California have killed at least five people and driven 157,000 people from their homes, fire officials said Friday. Near Los Angeles, the affluent beachside town of Malibu was ordered evacuated as a wind-driven blaze jumped the U.S. 101 Freeway and raced toward the sea.
Videos
There are three different fires now.
Gross Mismanagement
Here’s the Tweet if you wish to reply.
Trump Draws Ire from Firefighters
Please consider Trump draws ire from firefighters, celebrities for tweet about California fires
> The leader of the union that represents a majority of California’s firefighters said Saturday that President Donald Trump should apologize for blaming the state’s deadly wildfires on “poor” forest management.
> The Camp Fire in northern California reduced the town of Paradise to rubble and claimed the lives of nine people, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as Cal Fire. In addition, two bodies were found Friday night in Malibu within the 70,000-acre Woolsey Fire zone, Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials said.
> Actor Patricia Arquette tweeted, “Maybe Trump would like to see what would happen if California threatened to withhold our federal taxes.”
> The Pasadena Firefighters Association declared the president “wrong.”
> “The fires in So. Cal are urban interface fires and have NOTHING to do with forest management,” the association tweeted.
> Rice agreed. “Malibu is not a logged area,” he said. “It’s rolling hills and chaparral.”
> What’s more, he said, most of the state’s forests are managed by the federal government.
> “The president of the United States is ignorant of the process of forest management and wildfires,” he said.
> Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom tweeted, “Lives have been lost. Entire towns have been burned to the ground. Cars abandoned on the side of the road. People are being forced to flee their homes. This is not a time for partisanship. This is a time for coordinating relief and response and lifting those in need up.”
Welcome to Hell
ZeroHedge comments “Welcome To Hell”: More Than 250,000 Flee Cali Fires As Death Toll Climbs To 11; NWS Warns No Relief In Sight
> In one harrowing video posted to YouTube, one evacuee who returned to Paradise, the community of some 27,000 that was completely leveled by the Camp Fire, and was also the source of the most fatalities as elderly residents in a local retirement community struggled to flee, shared footage of charred bodies left behind by the storm. “I went to her house right here with this white car to take them out. She had to put her makeup on. She died because of it,” he can be heard saying in the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd_AqyPaUTg
Gross Insensitivity
From the information presented there does not appear to be “gross mismanagement”.
But even IF there is, it is is grossly insensitive at best, for Trump to have made that Tweet.
It is inexcusable.
Reader Comments
- Since there are regularly forest fires in California there should be some lines cut in the forest to partition the forests so the fires can not spread so quickly so if fire starts in one part it burns only that part of forest.
- Also areas where people live should again have lines cut around them in the surrounding forest to divide the residential areas so the forest fires can not spread so easy to them.
- Furthermore the building codes need to be updated so that in a fire prone area only roofs made from from metal are allowed on buildings so if the roof gets flying ash with spark in it the whole house does not burn down.
- Also if one has a swimming pool they should pump that out to the surrounding grass and trees around house to make them wet when forest fires are coming near so the fire does not take as easily.
- Trump is right that there has been obvious mismanagement of the forests but is it in forest controlled by State of California or forests controlled by Federal government is another matter.
- As always Trump is an insensitive buffoon that does not seem to know how to tweet in a little more thoughtful way.
Thanks to JL for those comments.
Number four is an individual action, number one is a government action.
Some readers noted this is no different than living in a hurricane or flood zone. I agree. People who live in such places do so voluntarily and they should pay the bill.
Putting a tax on all of California or subsidizing cheap insurance is the wrong approach.
As a Libertarian, I do not like suggestion 3. But I do agree that more information about the benefits of fire-proof roofs, perhaps fiberglass shingles would help.
None of this excuses gross insensitivity.
Correct Response
Trump should have shown empathy and volunteered to help California work out a better fire prevention program.
That would have gained him votes in the next election rather than costing him.
Trump repeatedly steps on his own feet. He could easily have gained votes out of this tragedy, at no cost to anyone.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Trump is 100% right. Don’t be a pus#!y Mish.
Not to worry,,,, 5000 illegal aliens are on their way to help with rebuilding…
Trump isn’t insensitive,,, He’s telling it like it is…
Insensitive is using my tax dollars to subsidize these people! !! Both the illegal alien immigrants and foolish folk that build in areas with high chances of fires not to mention earthquakes.. a Pox on all of them
Trump tweeted several times about the fires and not insensitively on all occasions, including these two:
“More than 4,000 are fighting the Camp and Woolsey Fires in California that have burned over 170,000 acres. Our hearts are with those fighting the fires, the 52,000 who have evacuated, and the families of the 11 who have died. The destruction is catastrophic. God Bless them all.” – Trump
“These California fires are expanding very, very quickly (in some cases 80-100 acres a minute). If people don’t evacuate quickly, they risk being overtaken by the fire. Please listen to evacuation orders from State and local officials!”
Comment #1, about cutting partition lines in forests, has been actively opposed by environmentalists, even to stop an ongoing brush fire via court action.
It is not presidential to say or tweet such things as Trump did, but no one else seems to be saying them, or at least no one important enough to get press coverage.
We had massive forest fires in the Northwest last 2 summers. Given the number of environmentalists in the area, we now have nature doing forest management for us. The once beautiful summer with clean air has become polluted and dreadful for everyone. And I am supposed to care about the sensitivity of tree huggers and environmentalists?!
Indeed “grossly insensitive”, this is the best time to say it.
Please let’s have more gross insensitivity, aka truth. And if some snowflakes can’t handle the truth, let them suffer the consequences.
President Trump said nothing about the competence of the response to the fires. He focused “like a laser” (as Billie Clinton used to say) on the conditions which created the need for a response.
Forest specialists have been talking for years about mis-management of forests — mismanagement mainly driven by idiot urban “environmentalists” who know not of what they speak. The deaths & destruction in these fires can be laid directly at the door of foolish “environmentalists”. Maybe once the snowflakes have finished melting, we can finally get serious about how to manage forests, especially in the wildland/urban interface.
You are so right.
As long as people continue to build homes and live in areas that humans were never meant to inhabit than these kind of natural disasters will continue to happen. Same thing applies to people who continue to live close to a beach. It all goes back to human overpopulation. I really feel sorry for all the insurance companies that will be stuck paying tens of billions of dollars to settle fire claims. Hopefully people will learn from these fires.
Problem now is overpopulation. If they all move away from these areas then theyre going to end up being our neighbors and building houses on whatever plot of land is left. I live in a rural area, it is increasingly closing in. People move out here to get away then try to live like they did in town its disgusting. Next thing you know you get slammed with tax hikes. Im all for populating these unsafe areas. Rebuild them immediately. Anything it takes to stay the hell away from me.
You made some very god points. I honestly don’t know what a fair answer is but i like what you wrote.
How is this any different than people choosing to live in hurricane and flood prone areas and then expecting the Federal government to subsidize home owners insurance AND clean up after a disaster? People need stop making bad decisions! And that usually happens when financial incentive to take on risk is removed.
It’s a city. People tend to live in them. Winds blow, fires start, fires spread. It can happen anywhere. It’s not a hurricane or flood or fire area: It’s a city. Chicago burned once. Hope your city never burns.
Amen. I agree with every every word you wrote. Well done.
¥ou are probably not going to stop that because of how nice the locations are. I would think that building hurricane proof homes is a possibility I have seen a news (not fake) story on that. The insurance companies could then have a better risk profile insuring homes built to those types of spes.
taxes gonna soar!hurricanes,wildfires,floods,with virtually every state and fed gov’t hopelessly insolvent and completely dependent on ever increasing taxes,fees and relentless money printing 2019 shaping up to be the year of the inflation wilfire!
Since there are regularly forest fires in California there should be some lines cut in the forest to partition the forests so the fires can not spread so quickly so if fire starts in one part it burns only that part of forest.
Also areas where people live should again have lines cut around them in the surrounding forest to divide the residential areas so the forest fires can not spread so easy to them.
Furthermore the building codes need to be updated so that in a fire prone area only roofs made from from metal are allowed on buildings so if the roof gets flying ash with spark in it the whole house does not burn down.
Also if one has a swimming pool they should pump that out to the surrounding grass and trees around house to make them wet when forest fires are coming near so the fire does not take as easily.
If the water pipes still have water in that situation obviously it is easier to use that but houses that have swimming pools should have a pump so they can use that if there is no longer water in the water pipes.
Trump is right that there has been obvious mismanagement of the forests but is it in forest controlled by State of California or forests controlled by Federal government is another matter.
As always Trump is an insensitive buffoon that does not seem to know how to tweet in a little more thoughtful way.
he is a moron , just say it.
“If the water pipes still have water in that situation obviously it is easier to use that but houses that have swimming pools should have a pump so they can use that if there is no longer water in the water pipes.”
Yup!
I was thinking on similar lines. Why cannot you have a bunch of synchronized water hydrants (obviously connected to a abundant water source) that open up and flood the place with water when there is a fire? I am sure bright minds can come up with a solution when they apply their mind to it. But then who is interested in this. It is more important to score brownie points between them for politicians.
Lines in the forest, reservoirs for firefighting, etc. should be MANDATORY for a landscape like California. There’s nothing such and people die every year, thousands of properties get turned to ashes, then rebuilt. Is this STUPID or what???
Similarly, there are hurricanes leveling areas of Florida on a regular basis. Still, everything is rebuilt to be leveled again.
The problem with all this is that via federal help (FEMA) and the way insurance companies operate, people somewhere relatively safe like Midwest are subsidizing people living in danger zones. This is STUPID. Mish, you should write about this!
But agreed – as a president, Trump should have worded his message VERY differently.
The subsidization is the problem. Really the only problem.
“Managing fires” by clearing zones etc., works no better than “managing the economy” by meddling in interest rates or via other means. It gives a false sense of security, and may limit small ripples. But only at the cost of necessitating much larger corrections when the resulting imbalances get too far out of whack.
Fires are an integral part of (non rain et least) forests. Just as business cycles are to economies. You can’t have one without the other. Something has to clear out excessive undergrowth and dead matter. In dryer areas, rot won’t do. Fires will.
Logging here and there, unless you clearcut California of brush and bramble altogether, won’t do anything to clear out excess carbon in non logged areas. So it will just build up until the fires it can sustain jumps any logging lane. Or, the logging lanes themselves, get filled up with tinder from surrounding non-logged areas. Blown there by the same wind that can then use this newfound bridge to propagate a fire.
This fire jumped the corridor cut to make room for the 101 and all it’s attendant services. An 8 lane freeway, service roads and businesses in the middle of one of the most populated regions in the US. If you compare SoCal to most of the country, it is already one of the most heavily “logged” regions. Simply to make room for development around roads. But, it’s also dry and windy. Hence will host brushfires. Just as Florida has hurricanes.
Subsidizing those choosing to live there, is where the problem arises. Malibu is a nice pleasant place to live. The cost of living there, includes having your stuff charred now and then. Make your choices, take your risks, and live (or die) with them. People still moved there; before FEMA, state and federal “crisis aid,” and subsidized insurance. As in every other aspect of life, no need for governments to meddle.
Translation of Trump tweet(s): “I don’t like California”
There really is not much more substance.
A pig is gonna act like a pig.