State has been ignoring precautionary fire measures for decades
President Trump received a lot of pushback from the media over his comments that the mismanagement of California’s land is partial responsible for the deadly wildfires currently plaguing the state.
“There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor,” he tweeted last week. “Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!”
But according to several reports, Trump is correct about California’s land mismanagement.
For example, California has been letting its vegetation grow uncontrollably over the last century, rather than allowing controlled burns to keep it at manageable levels, according to a report by High Country News.
“We have 100 years of fire suppression that has led to this huge accumulation of fuel loads, just dead and downed debris from trees and plant material in our forests, and in our woodlands,” fire ecologist Sasha Berleman said in 2017. “As a result of that, our forests and woodlands are not healthy, and we’re getting more catastrophic fire behavior than we would otherwise.”
Now California is paying the price because the state hasn’t addressed proper fire prevention methods in decades, according to fire chief Thom Porter.
“After aggressively suppressing fires for the last 100 years we have put our forests in a state of peril,” Porter said.
Additionally, by ignoring uncontrolled burns over the years, “unchecked growth has multiplied, dried out and created a tinderbox,” CBS reports.
