California fires alert: where is the money and water?

Breathtaking images of the California fires in the U.S. city of Los Angeles are making their way around the world.
The fact is made all the more shocking by the extensive media coverage that has focused especially on Hollywood and the movie and music stars who live there.
The tragic scenario is one of the many effects of global warming that today plagues different communities around the world. In Colombia, the environmental alarm went off again in the early hours of Wednesday morning, when a fire broke out between the Chingaza lagoon and the Chuza reservoir.
Although in Bogota, the emergency has been brought under control by the authorities, in California, the efforts do not cease.
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The largest natural disaster in the history of the United States
It is estimated that more than 11,000 structures have been damaged, while thousands of people have been displaced from their homes. Experts indicate that the affected area could be the size of Manhattan and more than 6 million people are in critical danger. 160 square kilometers have been razed and more than 175,000 people have been evacuated.
The California fires have affected hundreds of wooden buildings, a material widely used in the area due to its abundance, and although a similar event occurred in 2020, this time the damage has been greater.
Climatic variations in the region have aggravated the situation, as the contrast between very wet and very dry periods has increased combustible material; the last few months have seen one of the driest periods in history.
The area is very prone to fires and in 2021 there were 7,396, so it appears that state and federal authorities did not take sufficient preventive measures.
Experts have pointed out that the magnitude of the California fires is due to the so-called Santa Ana winds, a phenomenon due to the emergence of pressure zones that extend strong dry winds to the area, also to the lack of water available for large extensions and to climate change that has produced a “meteorological whiplash” in which very dry and very wet conditions contrast.
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Government responses and causes of California fires
The Biden administration announced an aid of US $770 dollars per person for those affected and has determined two protection zones and has described the situation as a war scenario.
The disaster caused by the California fires is the result of bad urban management, the irresponsibility of politicians and the economic interests of multimillionaires who manage the region’s water resources, as is the case with Stewart and Lynda Resnick.
The Resnicks own the Wonderful Company, which owns a large part of the Kern Water Bank, which is 32 square miles in size, was developed with public money, could supply water to the city of San Francisco for ten years, and a large percentage of the property ended up in Resnick’s hands.
In addition, the Resnick’s have large agricultural investments and benefit from their access to Californians’ drinking water by using it to irrigate their large extensions of crops, while in areas such as Lost Hills, residents are forced to use contaminated water from the activities of nearby oil and chemical companies. In East Porterville, a private company illegally diverted a flow of water to sell it to large agricultural corporations, including the Resnick’s.
The Resnick’s and other billionaires have profited enormously for years from California’s public water and it is ironic that in a state facing an unprecedented water crisis and major fires, the most powerful billionaires are literally drowning in money from corruption, embezzlement and mismanagement of its public water sources.
California burns, its ordinary citizens suffer from lack of water, while its billionaires sail on rivers of greed.
The limited support of the federal government to the citizens of the region contrasts with the resources allocated to attend to wars such as those in Ukraine and the Middle East, and the situation has exacerbated internal contradictions in the United States to the point that Donald Trump described local authorities as incompetent.
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