President Trump is again blaming California’s 2018’s devastating wildfires on forest mismanagement and threatening to withhold FEMA funds from Camp Fire victims. In…
President Trump is again blaming California’s 2018’s devastating wildfires on forest mismanagement and threatening to withhold FEMA funds from Camp Fire victims.
In a Wednesday morning tweet, Trump said the fires that killed more than 90 people last year would not have happened had the state’s forests been properly managed.
It wan’t the first time the president blamed California officials for mismanaging forests, which led to fires that burned hundreds of thousands of acres in 2018.
Just after the Camp Fire in Butte County broke out Nov. 8, Trump sent out a tweet blaming the fires on forest mismanagement in California.
Critics, however, pointed out much of the acreage burned was on federally managed land.
The largest blaze in state history, the 410,200-acre Ranch Fire, this past summer burned on large swaths of land managed by the U. S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management in Mendocino and nearby counties north of San Francisco.
In fact, six of California’s 16 most destructive wildfires in the past 25 years — in terms of structures destroyed — occurred on federal lands, according to California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection records.
RELATED: President Trump says he’s cutting off FEMA money for California fires
In Shasta County, last summer’s 229,650-acre Carr Fire started on National Park Service lands before spreading to private property and eventually into the city of Redding.
The Hirz and Delta fires also burned mostly Forest Service lands in Shasta County just after the Carr Fire died down. Between the two, they consumed 109,500 acres, according to Cal Fire.
Even the Camp Fire, which has become the most destructive fire in the state’s history, started either on or very close to the national forest before spreading to private property to the west.
