The series of wildfires in California has already taken at least five lives, reports confirm. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump pins the blame on the state itself for not listening.
Lightning strikes plus the heatwave have reportedly caused the catastrophic California wildfires recently. The risk for further spread of the coronavirus id heightened as tens of thousands of people evacuate from the blazing infernos that had enveloped their homes to shelters.
Wildfires in California pic.twitter.com/WAwOD5wZPG
— Nature is Lit🔥 (@NaturelsLit) August 20, 2020
The current state of California wildfires
Per CNN, there are over 360 recent first, and many of those have spread “due to high temperatures, inaccessible terrain and limited resources.” The cause of the fires was mostly due to lightning strikes.
22 of those have been identified to cover 660,000 acres of land across the California state, as cited from the assistant deputy director of Cal Fire, Daniel Berlant.
CBS further reports that more than 100 homes have been engulfed by the California wildfire, with 50,000 more endangered.
As to getting everyone to safety, the news outlet notes that “ready-to-evacuate orders” have been put in place. In Santa Cruz, 20,000 have already been asked to evacuate, however, people are still reportedly missing.
The Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office, via Deputy Chris Clark, said, “There are people that are unaccounted for, that we are looking to try to determine where they are,
Governor Gavin Newsom describes the ongoing devastation, as quoted by CNN, saying, “We are experiencing fires, the likes of which we haven’t seen in many, many years.”
President Trump’s comment on the California wildfires
Meanwhile, the President of the United States spoke about the current state of California during his rally on Thursday in Pennsylvania, says Politico.
Trump expressed:
“I see again the forest fires are starting. They’re starting again in California. I said, you gotta clean your floors, you gotta clean your forests — there are many, many years of leaves and broken trees and they’re like, like, so flammable, you touch them and it goes up.”
“Maybe we’re just going to have to make them pay for it because they don’t listen to us.”
Accordingly, Trump’s critics have accused him of “politicizing natural disasters.” The media outlet has noted that the president’s blame game and “questionable remedies” have been familiar to the people of California.
The “predictable response” from Trump is said to include blaming a “Democrat-dominated state” and threatens to impose punishment which usually entails withholding funds or money.
The media outlet cites the fire incidents from 2018 and 2019, when he responded the same—blame game and withholding of funds.
Featured image courtesy of Piotr Zajda/Shutterstock