Tag: wildfires

Hawaii governor says state is looking to ‘acquire land’ that was destroyed in fires

On Monday, Hawaiian governor Josh Green announced that his administration was considering acquiring properties in the seaside resort town of Lahaina that had been destroyed by the recent wildfires.

He vowed to prevent foreign buyers from swooping in to exploit the tragedy, suggesting the state was better suited to take control of the land.

“I’m already thinking of ways for the state to acquire that land so that we can put it into workforce housing, to put it back into families, or make it open spaces in perpetuity as a memorial to the people who were lost,” Green said while standing amongst the rubble.

“We want this to be something we remember after the pain passes as a magic place. Lahaina will rebuild. The tragedy right now is the loss of life. The buildings can be rebuilt over time, even the banyan tree may survive, but we don’t want this to become a clear space where then people from overseas just come and decide they’re gonna take it. The state will take it and preserve it first.”

In a separate press conference, Green reiterated his committment to ensure the land was protected for residents, and revealed that he had spoken with the Hawaiian attorney general regarding “options to do a moratorium on any sales of properties that have been damaged or destroyed.”

“It’s going to be a very long time before any growth or housing can be built, so you will be pretty poorly informed if you try to steal land from our people and then build here,” he said, adding, “I will try to allow no one from outside our state to buy any land until we get through this crisis and decide what Lahaina should be in the future.”

According to the Honolulu Civil Beat, over 2,000 structures were destroyed in the fire, three quarters of which were residential. Nearly 100 people have been found dead, though that number is expected to rise as crews continue searching the area.

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Majority in fires in Greece were started by ‘human hand’, official says

The majority of the fires which have ravaged Greece in recent weeks were started by “human hand”, one of the country’s top climate officials has said.

Greece’s climate change minister said 667 fires had erupted, as wildfires scorched hundreds of square miles of land outside Athens, on the island of Rhodes, and elsewhere this month.

Vassilis Kikilias told a news conference the vast majority of fires “were caused by human hands” and said they were “arsons either by criminal negligence or by intention”.

It comes as at least nine countries across the Mediterranean have been hit by wildfires, as extreme heat hitting the region has seen temperatures top 40C.

However, officials have also highlighted the role of climate change in the recent extreme heat across many European countries.

Mr Kikilias warned earlier that the climate crisis “brought us this unprecedented heatwave”.

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Despite Multiple Arson Arrests, MSM Continues to Blame Canada Wildfires on ‘Climate Change’

Despite the arrest of multiple arsonists, the mainstream media in Canada seems intent on attributing the nation’s recent wildfires to “climate change.”

As wildfires continue to spread across western, and now central and eastern Canada, burning forestland and homes, the mainstream media continues to imply that climate change is the main culprit, despite a growing number of reports showing that arsonists have been arrested for allegedly setting dozens of fires.

“Several arsonists have been arrested in the past weeks in different provinces for lighting forest fires,” People’s Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier tweeted. “But the lying woke media and politicians keep repeating that global warming is the cause.” 

The severe nature of the wildfires has caused Canadians to wonder why they have spread so rapidly, especially as many of the affected areas are not typically impacted by wildfires of this degree or at this time of the year.

In the past months, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) have arrested several arsonists who have been charged with lighting fires across several provinces including Nova Scotia, Yukon, British Columbia, and Alberta. The motive behind lighting the fires is unclear.  

One Albertan, John Cook, has been arrested and charged with 10 counts of arson after setting a string of wildfires in and around Cold Lake, a hamlet near Edmonton. 

In addition to damaging vehicles and structures, Cook was charged with setting aflame the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Cherry Grove, Alberta. 

A Vancouver man charged with arson has been released until his trial on October 9, with Cpl. Michael Gauthier asserting that he is not a risk to light further fires.

“This incident was not random in nature and we do not believe there is risk to other members of the public or businesses from the individual who was arrested,” Gauthier stated.

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Here is a story that most people won’t see because it doesn’t push the radical left agenda. Wildfires are down 85% this year

Most years we hear a lot about wildfires in California. Instead of admitting they are cyclical and natural and that a significant number of them are caused because underbrush isn’t cleared, we are told that they are getting worse and are caused by humans and our abuse of natural resources.

From the following Wall Street Journal article: 362,403 acres burned this year in California versus 2.6 million in 2021 and a  2.2 million average the last five years.

My guess is most people won’t see that good news because it doesn’t scare people into submission to the radical green agenda to destroy America. They wouldn’t willingly give up their gas-powered vehicles and natural gas-heated homes if they were told that the climate is and has always changed cyclically and naturally. 

If the story came out, Governor Newsom would probably take credit for the massive reduction. As the WSJ writes:

One of the slowest wildfire seasons in years has come to an end in the West thanks to well-timed rain and cooler temperatures, bringing a reprieve to a region hit by numerous destructive blazes over the past several years.

The break is giving firefighters an opportunity to focus on prevention efforts such as thinning forests that could lessen damage from wildfires in the future, according to officials.

This year was a very mild year for hurricanes, many fewer than predicted.  Named storms only got to the letter “N”. Of course, the public didn’t get that good news. either. Instead, they were told the false information that the two significant hurricanes in Florida were made stronger by humans and our use of natural resources.

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US Government Starts New Mexico Wildfire, Tells Victims To Help Pay For Damages

The U.S. government started the largest wildfire in New Mexico’s recorded history this April, but is now asking victims to share in the recovery costs, according to Reuters.

U.S. Forest Service (USFS) officials lost control of two controlled burns in April, destroying 341,000 acres and 432 homes in northeastern New Mexico, according to MSN. President Joe Biden claimed that the federal government would cover “100% of the cost” of the disaster, but the disaster declaration ultimately only covered the cost of debris removal and emergency protective measures, leaving many victims stuck with programs that require buy-in to rebuild their houses and other necessary infrastructure, according to Reuters.

Examples of these programs include the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Natural Resources Conservation Service and the USDA’s Emergency Forest Restoration Program, which require a 25% contribution from the affected landowner, a prohibitively expensive cost for many of the low-income farmers and ranchers in the area, Reuters reports.

Dan Encianis, a rancher from Tierra Monte, just 35 miles northeast of Santa Fe, was originally told by the USDA that he would see “little to no cost” for support to fix the well on his property before being asked to foot 25% of the bill, according to Reuters. Encianias was also told his application would not be processed until September, and work wouldn’t begin for six to 12 months after that.

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Feds Admit Starting Two Fires Now Merged Into Largest In State’s History

Two New Mexico wildfires now merged into the single biggest blaze in the state’s history were both started by a federal government agency, officials admitted Friday.

Both blazes were sparked by “pile burns,” fires set to get rid of wood and debris from thinning and reforestation projects, the Albuquerque Journal reported. Although those fires are meant to be controlled burns, in both cases they have raged out of the control of the Santa Fe National Forest Service. The two wildfires, the Calf Canyon Fire and the the Hermits Peak Fire, have now merged. Between them, they have burned more than 312,00 acres and destroyed nearly 800 structures, including hundreds of homes.

“The Santa Fe National Forest is 100 percent focused on suppressing these fires with the support of the Type 1 incident management teams who are fully prepared to manage complex, all-risk situations,” SFNF supervisor Debbie Cress said. “Our commitment is to manage the public lands entrusted to us by improving the forest’s resilience to the many stressors they are facing, including larger, hotter wildfires, historic levels of drought, rising temperatures, and insects and disease.”

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Feds Caught Deleting Data to Make It Appear That “Climate Change” Causes Wildfires

A federal agency has been caught tampering with historical wildfire data in an obvious effort to make wildfire prevalence and severity appear to be correlated with alleged global warming.

Created in 1965, the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) maintains statistics on annual wildfire counts and the number of acres burned in those fires. Until recently, the NIFC posted on its website wildfire statistics for every year since 1926, as evidenced by this Internet Archive screen capture. However, the agency now only posts statistics from 1983 to the present. Why?

“The answer,” asserts climate realist Anthony Watts, “is simple; data prior to 1983 shows that U.S. wildfires were far worse both in frequency and total acreage burned. By disappearing all data prior to 1983, which just happens to be the lowest point in the dataset, now all of the sudden we get a positive slope of worsening wildfire aligning with increased global temperature, which is perfect for claiming ‘climate change is making wildfire[s] worse.’”

To prove his point, Watts created graphs from both the original data and the now-scrubbed data. The graph of the complete dataset shows that from the 1920s to the early 1980s, there were far more wildfires covering far more acreage than there have been since. The graph of the current NIFC dataset, on the other hand, suggests an increase in both statistics over time.

Another graph generated by Watts sheds further light on the complete dataset. The worst of the wildfires occurred during the 1930–1941 “Dust Bowl” era and again during the 1976–1978 drought in the West. Meanwhile, 1982–1983 saw a “super El Nino” that soaked the western states, causing 1983 to have the fewest and least-destructive wildfires on record. After that, wildfire and acreage counts naturally increased, but thus far they have seldom approached most of the pre-1983 counts and have been far below the counts from the peak years of that era.

Watts traces the history of the NIFC’s public statements on the pre-1983 data and finds a curious pattern: Since Watts’ publicization of the data’s death blow to the claim that “global warming” causes wildfires, the NIFC has cast increasing doubt on the reliability of the older data to the point that it now claims said data is so bad it cannot be posted publicly.

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Deadly California Wildfire Was Ignited To Cover Up A Murder, Sheriff Says

A Northern California blaze in 2020 that became part of one of the biggest and deadliest wildfires in state history was deliberately set to cover up the murder of a woman, officials have revealed. Now the suspect in that killing is also facing charges in the deaths of two fire victims.

Victor Serriteno, 29, of Vacaville, has been in prison awaiting trial in the death of 32-year-old Priscilla Castro, who vanished while on a date with him in August 2020. Her burned body was found the following month near Lake Berryessa in Solano County, about 60 miles west of Sacramento. 

“Based on an extensive eight-month-long investigation, we believe Serriteno deliberately set the Markley Fire in an attempt to conceal his crime,” Solano County Sheriff Tom Ferrara said at a news conference Wednesday.

The deaths of 82-year-old Douglas Mai and 64-year-old Leon “James” Bone, whose bodies were found near where Castro’s body was discovered, had been blamed on the Markley fire. Those two deaths have now been classified as homicides.

The 30,000-acre Markley Fire merged with other wildfires to become part the massive LNU Lightning Complex blaze, one of the largest ever in California. It burned 363,000 acres, killing six people and destroying 1,500 homes and other buildings.

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California environmental professor argues ‘white supremacy’ is the cause of wildfires and hurricanes

Ted Grudin, who earned his Ph.D. in environmental science from the University of California-Berkeley, wrote an op-ed in the Earth Island Journal last week titled, “How White Supremacy Caused the Climate Crisis.”

In the op-ed, Grudin asserted that “embedded in the theory of racial supremacy is the theory of human supremacy over nature, which has brought environmental calamity upon us.”

As Grudin sees it, white supremacy thrives on the “accumulation of wealth and power” of a select few, namely Caucasians, and the “oppression and destruction” of everyone and everything else. White people, he argued, have historically believed that dominance and control are their “natural rights” and have thus sought to “colonize peoples and lands.”

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