Alwaght- Having helped Israel to reduce Gaza to ashes with delivery of thousands of tons of bombs and other weapons to Tel Aviv, the US has itself fallen victim to the mother nature's wrath and its most populated state is burning in wildfires. The fire in California, particularly Los Angeles, that started from last Tuesday is so big that you can say it has opened the gates of hell to the city. The fire, yet to be contained, has already destroyed thousands of acres of forests and pastures of California and killed 11.
According to local officials, more than 536,000 people in Los Angeles have no power, and according to Southern California Edison, the electric company that serves 15 million people in southern, central and coastal California, it is currently impossible to restore power in some areas due to inclement weather conditions in Los Angeles.
The rapidly growing blazes have forced 137,000 people to flee their homes and at least 28,000 buildings are under serious threat. Entire parts of the second-largest city in the US have been destroyed and more than 10,000 buildings have collapsed, according to the California Fire Department.
Seasonal winds are also playing a role in fanning the flames, making it difficult for firefighters to put them down. Despite a drop in wind speed on Saturday, the fires in Los Angeles are still burning, with thick smoke blanketing the city.
The fires have negatively affected the film industry in Hollywood, with filming of several films and TV series halted and Universal Studios Hollywood closed. The homes of several prominent Hollywood actors have also been destroyed and them forced to flee the city.
CNN described the massive wildfires in California as "apocalyptic" scenes across Los Angeles. US President Joe Biden said the wildfires in Los Angeles were "vast, devastating and the worst in California's history". Biden said: "This scene is more like a war zone and a bombing campaign. People in Los Angeles are facing a nightmare." Biden praised the firefighters who ran into the flames to fight the fire as "heroes."
According to reports, the fires are so severe that they are estimated to cost between $130 billion and $150 billion.
The massive Los Angeles wildfire has reduced expensive properties and parts of the forest to ashes, but US officials and media claim that weather conditions caused the devastating fires. According to US officials, much of the region is facing a severe drought and dry vegetation is the cause of the fire's formation and rapid progress, but these are justifications for escape the responsibility and domestic criticism. Amid increase in looting in damaged or evacuated areas, local authorities imposed a curfew in Pacific Palisades and Altadena on Friday and deployed military units.
The federal administration's failure to contain the fires has provided Donald Trump with a good opportunity to attack Democrats in Biden's final days in the White House.
"One of the best and most beautiful parts of America is burning and being destroyed. It's a pile of ashes now. Gavin Newsom (Governor of California) must step down. This situation reflects a combination of incompetence and mismanagement by Biden and Newsom," said the president-elect.
Aging infrastructure
Though mobilizing thousands of firefighters to contain the wildfires which injured some people and firefighters, the Los Angeles Fire Department called other states for help. One reason for the fire to progress this fast is the shortage of fire equipment and water resources. While the firefighters are struggling to put the fire out, they were surprised by the water resources running out.
As wildfires spread rapidly across Los Angeles, images of firefighters using traffic cones and buckets of water to extinguish the flames have sparked criticism against the city authorities, with some activists mocking the images on social media.
Authorities have acknowledged that high-altitude water storage tanks and the pumping systems that feed them cannot keep up with the demand as the fire spreads from one neighborhood to another, and that those who designed the system failed to take into account the rapid spread of the crisis.
“City water systems are designed for firefighters to hit multiple hydrants at once, but they can fail when a fire rages,” said Marty Adams, former general manager and chief engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. “This problem can be especially acute in high-wind conditions like those experienced in Los Angeles and when firefighting aircraft are unable to safely perform their usual aerial operations using water and fire retardant.”
Local officials stress the need to rethink how the systems are designed. Before the current dangerous weather conditions, storage tanks over Pacific Palisades and other hill communities affected by the fires were full, they said, but as the fire spread, the first tank quickly run out of water, and within hours, the second was empty, and by Wednesday, the third storage was out of water.
In many parts of California, limited access to water and firefighting equipment is making it more difficult to fight the fires. A lack of modern infrastructure and adequate manpower are among the main challenges in managing wildfires. It is said that in the midst of these apocalyptic fires, about 20 percent of fire hydrants were dry, and access to water was rare. The head of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power said that more than three million gallons of water were available when the fires started, but the demand was four times higher than anything the system had ever seen, and given the scale of the fire, there simply was not enough surplus water to respond to the scale of the disaster.
Local officials have revealed that Los Angeles water systems are among several infrastructures suffering from severe funding shortfalls, with some water pipes being a century old. Los Angeles fire chief Christian Crowley said the cuts in operating budgets have negatively impacted their ability to maintain core operations, such as technology and communications infrastructure, payroll processing, training, fire prevention and community education.
Meanwhile, the Daily Mail reported that a week before the devastating fires in Los Angeles began, Mayor Karen Bass ordered a $17 million budget cut to the city’s fire department. The cuts, which led to the closure of 16 fire stations and severely reduced the department’s preparedness and ability to respond to the coming disaster, Daily Mail reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.
Captain Easton, a veteran fire officer who helped contain some blazes, said there were other complications, such as delays in sending additional support crews from other areas to the affected areas.
On the other hand, old and worn-out power lines have been a major factor in recent fires in the US. In some cases, downed power lines or malfunctioning electrical equipment have created sparks that have started large-scale fires.
US management weakness in responding to crises
The failure to respond effectively to Los Angeles wildfires proved that the US officials are not ready for such crises and the infrastructure and equipment needed to respond are aging, leaving the firefighters practically ineffective. The home experts in recent days have attacked the federal government for underfunding the institutions responding to crises, while every year increasing military spending.
The government's poor performance in containing crises comes at a time when billions of dollars are collected from citizens every year in taxes to spend on people's welfare, but in times of crisis, it is proven that these huge revenues have been spent elsewhere than on services. The US cuts millions of dollars from the fire department budget and pays them lower salaries, but in return, it allocates tens of billions of dollars to aid Ukraine, and even Biden and his team proudly announce that they will support Kiev until the last dollar of Washington.
Furthermore, only in the past two decades, Washington spent about $7 trillion in Middle East, and given their spending in other parts of the world, the amount is larger. Even recently, Trump has proposed new expansionist ideas, including buying Greenland and the Panama Canal by paying billions of dollars. These huge amounts that are supposed to be used for territorial expansion in other regions, if spent on domestic management, could have prevented the disaster in Los Angeles, so that it would not be ridiculed by the world for its poor firefighting performance.
The incapability to contain Los Angeles wildfires once again proved that the US is even inefficient in settling home crises and the eight-decades of American officials' rhetoric about managing the world and settling global challenges is only an empty claim.
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