Despite the seemingly endless efforts of firefighters, wildfires across California continue to grow. As of Saturday morning, over 500 fires are burning—many triggered by an extraordinary lightning storm that blasted the state while delivering little in the way of rain. The issue has been intensified by the heat wave that has generated all time high temperature records in Death Valley. California is hot, dry, and has been plagued by over ten thousand lightning bolts—all of which is directly connected to climate change. More of the same could be on the way. Though West Coast thunderstorms are usually rare, the National Weather Service is predicting that the remnants of tropical system Genevieve are likely to deliver more storms across the center of the state on Sunday and Monday, with dry lightning more likely than rainfall. Some lightning storms are possible on Saturday.
More than 775,000 acres have been destroyed, over 120,000 people have been evacuated, and despite the state’s 12,000 firefighters working unbelievable hours, not much of the fires are under control. The evacuations have been especially difficult, as people are having to crowd into shelters at the same time that COVID-19 continues to be all too common, The air quality resulting from the hundreds of fires is threatening to millions who don’t have the coronavirus.
Meanwhile, the Southeast prepares to handle twin tropical storms whose simultaneous entry into the Gulf is unprecedented, and whose ultimate impact is difficult to predict.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, SFGate reports that the enormous LNU fire has burned over 300,000 acres, making it the second largest fire in state history. Not far away, eight separate fires have merged into the 194,000 acre Hennessey Fire. Altogether, a larger area has burned in California than the state of Rhode Island, and very few of the hundreds of fires are contained. As The New York Times reports, Gov. Gavin Newsom has put out a call for assistance. Firefighters from 10 states are expected to begin arriving on Saturday, with firefighters from Canada and Australia also on their way.
However, climate change denier Donald Trump has blamed California for the fires. At a rally on Thursday evening, Trump spoke as the Democratic convention was preparing for Joe Biden’s acceptance speech, telling the few hundred people at the tiny gathering, “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 floors. There are many, many years of leaves and broken trees and they’re like … like, so flammable. You touch them and it goes up." How it’s possible to “clean the floors” of an entire state, Trump hasn’t made clear. He did make clear how much he enjoys the situation. “Maybe we’re just going to have to make them pay for it because they don’t listen to us,” said Trump. He has not responded to a request from Newsom for the declaration of a major emergency.
Over in the Southeast, tropical storms Laura and Marco are still headed for a near rendezvous next week. Over the last 24 hours, the projected tracks of the two storms have changed, bringing them closer together. It now appears that Marco will hit the Texas-Louisiana border sometime on Tuesday morning as a tropical storm. Laura will follow, reaching hurricane strength before it strikes Louisiana on Wednesday evening. The two storms are approaching the coast from different directions, but their close proximity is making it more difficult to accurately model the outcome. As of Saturday morning, projections have the centers of the two storms reaching the coast less than 200 miles apart—about half the distance of projections on Friday.
As in California, evacuees in the area will also be facing the issue of the continuing COVID-19 pandemic. In both Florida and Texas, the number of tests conducted has fallen sharply, but the rate of positives remains over 15%. Louisiana, which has taken much more direct measures to fight the virus, currently has a positivity rate below 5%, but that number could easily increase if thousands are forced to move by hurricane-force winds or extensive flooding.
If this seems like an amazing confluence of disasters, it is, but they have a uniting theme—scientists make clear that the conditions in California—both the heat and the “lightning siege”—are connected to climate change. The same is true of the overactive Atlantic hurricane season. So in a way, there are two disasters—global warming and the pandemic. Both of them aided by Donald Trump’s malignant incompetence and deliberate attempt at genocide.
