As you may have heard, on November 10, a massive forest fire started in California and eventually jumped over to city buildings of the nearby Paradise, burning down the city almost to the ground in a matter of hours.
Hundreds of people were forced to flee their houses. According to the local fire dept., the blaze destroyed over 2000 buildings, hundreds of small businesses, and more than 18,000 acres of land in just a few hours. Currently the wildfires have decimated over 90,000 acres and still counting. Reportedly, on Monday, Nov. 12, only 20% of the fires were contained.
The mass evacuation was, of course, announced, but there were still victims among citizens as well as the firefighters. Sadly, the fires kept spreading, bringing the total death toll from across California to 44, with 228 people still missing, making this the most devastating forest fire in state history.
Among the 250,000+ people evacuated from the hot spots, 13,000 people were from the Malibu area, including celebs like Lady Gaga, Kim Kardashian, Cher, Gerard Butler, Guilermo del Toro, Neil Young, and Miley Cyrus. Some of whom have lost their homes and all of their belongings.
President Trump blames this tragedy on poor forest management, because of course he does. And, hey, maybe it was just as simple as lazy park workers, but calling out who’s responsible should not be the President’s initial reaction to a national tragedy. Besides, the droughts in California are legendary, so it’s not too far-fetched of an option that this is just one of Mother Nature’s cruel life lessons.
Currently hundreds of rescue teams keep looking for the survivors, over 3200 firefighters are doing their best to extinguish the blaze, and at this point, everyone just hopes this hell is just a bad nightmare. It’s not over yet.
