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MCCLELLAN PARK: President Donald Trump suggested on Monday (Sept. 14) that global warming will be reversed and dismissed climate change as a cause of fierce fires engulfing swaths of the western United States, during a briefing in California on the fires. mortals.
Trump, who flew to Sacramento on the third day of a re-election campaign, rebuffed state officials arguing that hot weather is the basis for the growing fires, which have killed at least 35 people since the beginning of the summer. .
“It’s going to start to get cooler. Just watch,” Trump said.
“I wish science would agree with you,” responded Wade Crowfoot, director of the California Natural Resources Agency.
Trump upon his arrival also repeated his argument that the wildfires are instead due to insufficient maintenance of forest areas to make them less combustible.
“There has to be strong forest management,” he said.
“With regard to forests, when the trees fall after a short period of time, about 18 months, they become very dry. They become really like a matchstick,” he added. “They just explode.”
READ: Explainer: How This Year’s Destructive Western US Wildfire Season Got Started
Minutes earlier, Democratic challenger Joe Biden attacked Trump as a “climate arsonist” whose reelection would be catastrophic for the environment.
“If you give a climate arsonist four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised if we have more of America on fire?” Biden said, attacking Trump for failing to “take responsibility” for the current wildfire crisis.
“We need a president who respects science, who understands that the damage of climate change is already here,” added Biden.
Wildfire smoke and fog obscure the ocean view from Grand View Park in San Francisco on Sept. 14, 2020 (Photo: AP / Jeff Chiu)
Climate change amplifies droughts, which dry up regions, creating ideal conditions for wildfires to spread uncontrollably and cause unprecedented damage.
Fires in California, Oregon and Washington state have burned nearly five million acres (two million hectares), burning an area roughly the size of the state of New Jersey, with fears that the death toll will rise.
The president’s visit to California would last only a few hours, before he returns to the election campaign in Arizona.
California Governor Gavin Newsom, who has argued that the fires are driven primarily by global warming, acknowledged when meeting with Trump that better forest management was needed.
But he said the overwhelming cause of the problem is much greater.
READ: Search teams scour the charred Oregon landscape, residents return to rubble as wildfires burn
“The hot spots are getting hotter, the dry ones are getting drier,” he said. “We present that the science is on the inside and the observed evidence is self-evident – that climate change is real and that’s exacerbating this.”
Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris will also tour the damage Tuesday. She tweeted that Trump has “denied evidence” that the fires were “intensified by the climate crisis.”
Of at least 35 people killed by the fires since early summer, 27 died last week.
Trump has made few comments about the massive fires in recent weeks, drawing strong criticism for failing to acknowledge the crisis.
‘APOCALYPTIC’
Much of the West Coast remained covered in heavy smog Monday, and Portland is the most polluted city in the world according to IQAir.
“It’s apocalyptic,” Washington State Governor Jay Inslee told ABC’s This Week.
“It’s maddening right now we have this cosmic challenge to our communities, the entire west coast of the United States on fire, to have a president who denies that these are not just wildfires, these are weather fires,” he said.
READ: ‘There are just no words’ – Oregon family returns home to find pile of ashes
Most of the deaths occurred in California and Oregon.
More than 30,000 firefighters are battling the flames, and officials warned that the weather improvement could end Monday as wind conditions return.
Residents of Arcadia, outside Los Angeles, were ordered to evacuate Sunday when the nearby Bobcat Fire swept south through wooded terrain toward the metropolis.
Two new deaths were confirmed by the North Complex Fire, which swept through at unprecedented speeds this week in areas already devastated less than two years ago by the Camp Fire, the deadliest fire in California history.
“There are still active fires, power lines are down, trees are down, roads are impassable,” Sheriff Kory Honea said, warning evacuees it could take “weeks and weeks” to return to their homes.
Paul Clement described to AFP how he fled his home in Berry Creek.
“When I got to the bend, everything was on fire, a whole hillside. So I ended up driving and you couldn’t see 15 meters.”
“It was worse than the Camp Fire, which I didn’t think was possible.”
In California alone 3.3 million acres have been burned, an annual record, with more than three months of fire season yet to come, and more than 4,100 structures destroyed.
