Summary

Disaster survivors in Arkansas were “blocked from receiving federal recovery aid” after Donald Trump denied Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ request for a major disaster declaration.

The Trump administration stated the damage was “not of such severity and magnitude as to be beyond the capabilities of the state.”

Trump signed executive orders to shift disaster recovery responsibility to states, while aiming to eliminate FEMA.

Sanders appealed, writing, “the state and its citizens are in dire need of assistance.” Without federal aid, “volunteer organizations in Arkansas are stepping up” as the state faces “significant challenges” in recovery efforts.

  • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    3·
    13 hours ago

    Every building could have been surrounded by concrete (and some were!) without significantly impacting the spread, which was primarily wind driven. Seriously, listen to what the firefighters and other experts have said about this.

    Once the houses caught on fire they became the fuel, not dry grass. Combined with the water pressure dropping from 10,000 houses going up in flames practically simultaneously, it was impossible to control. The planes they normally fly in to drop retardant couldn’t even fly in the wind, because the water they dropped would just fucking float in the air before getting scattered. Nobody can stop that until the winds die down.

    Which is getting somewhat off topic, but my overall point is that these climate disasters can happen anywhere. Blue states and red states are both going to suffer, and it’s deranged to pump your fist when people in a red state get hit just because they might have voted Trump. It’s not less deranged than it is when MAGAs celebrate the fires in California.

    • Null User Object@lemmy.world
      2·
      12 hours ago

      You two are clearly talking about very specific fires that occurred under very specific conditions. I’m not going to debate what happened or why. That’s for the experts to weigh in on.

      I however would like to point out that there are “best practices” for communities and structures in the wildland-urban interface. Relevant to this discussion is the following…

      Guidelines for landscaping:

      • Keep vegetation from around windows (heat will break glass).
      • Keep plants farther than 5 feet (1.5 m) from walls; this is a bare dirt no-grow zone, optional to use mowed green lawn grass and non-combustible mulch with sparse deciduous plants.
      • Keep trees from growing within 30 feet (9.1 m) of the structure.
      • Keep vegetation thinned within 100 feet (30 m) of the structure.

      Guidelines for outdoor maintenance:

      • Prune tree limbs back 10 feet (3.0 m) from roofs.
      • Separate tree branches from power lines.
      • Clear fallen debris from roof, gutters, window wells, and under decks.
      • Prune tree branches 6 feet (1.8 m) up from the ground.
      • Burn ground of leaf litter and needles.
      • Remove and dispose of dead trees and shrubs.

      Guidelines for flammables:

      • Keep clear of flammables 30 feet (9.1 m) around primary and auxiliary structures including firewood piles.
      • Keep clear 10 feet (3.0 m) around propane tanks or fuel oil tanks.

      These obviously aren’t going to protect every house from every fire. But that doesn’t mean people should ignore them.

      I’m also not implying that anyone affected by the specific fires being discussed above didn’t exercise appropriate caution for where they lived. Certainly some did. Others possibly didn’t.

      But the reason these guidelines exist is because there have been people who’s homes were affected by other wildfires, and experts have concluded that the the above conditions have, at times, contributed to the problem, and that people should do their part to mitigate the problems on their property, and help bring awareness to their neighbors.

      • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        1·
        11 hours ago

        I want to preface that I’m not trying to be argumentative about it, I just have a lot of thoughts about it after spending a month hoping rain would wash the goddamned ash away soon. The measures you’re talking about absolutely help, in normal circumstances. The fires we had were extremely abnormal. We have fire season here, we’re used to the threat of fires and anyone who lives in an interface zone and isn’t a fool will add fire hardening measures to their home. But these weren’t just homes on and in the hills that caught on fire.

        Look at Altadena, so many of the homes there were nowhere near a wildland-urban interface zone. When places a mile away from the hills are are getting torched, that’s not what went wrong. The hills were dried to a crisp after 8 months of nearly no rain; climate change caused the lack of rain, and climate change caused the Santa Ana winds to blow at hurricane force. What could anyone have done to stop a spark from happening anywhere? Once a spark happened, that was it. That’s why we had something like 6 fires burning at once in LA county during that, it might have been more.

        Part of the problem is that homes outside what is considered the interface zone, whose owners had no reason to believe it was urgent to take those measures, were getting showered with cinders from a mile or more away while subjected to high winds. They were basically living in the middle of town, not on the hillside.

        I want to emphasize that fire hardening is absolutely something everyone should do, but that was considered kind of paranoid re: wildfires until now.