US President Donald Trump arrived in Sacramento for a briefing on the fires on Monday and also addressed the media on the raging wildfires in the West Coast. Trump blamed the firefighting and forest management for the California fires, but went on to explain what is causing the forest wildfires, which instantly made the headlines.
Trump said the trees explode when dry, triggering the wildfires in lush areas. The fires have raged from California to Oregon and Washington State. As a result, thousands of people have had to abandon their homes and lives have also been lost.
Exploding trees cause wildfires
Without any mention of climate change, Trump was quick to shift blame to forest mismanagement for the wildfires in California.
"When trees fall down after a short period of time, about 18 months, they become very dry, they become really like a match stick and they get up you know there's no more water pouring through and they become very, very they just explode. They can explode. Also leaves. When you have years of leaves, dried leaves on the ground it just sets it up. It's really a fuel for a fire. So they have to do something about it," Trump told the reporters.
Trees explode only in the event of lightning striking a tree. It is not clear if the president was speaking figuratively or meant trees explode in a literal sense. But Trump also came up with a solution to avoid wildfires is by trimming the forests.
"They also have to do cuts, I mean people don't like to do cuts but they have to do cuts in between, so if you do have a fire and it gets away you'll have a 50-yard cut in between, so it won't be able to catch to the other side, they don't do that."
Climate arsonist
Trump's remarks baffled many, especially presidential nominee Joe Biden who called the president a "climate arsonist." Trump's claims that the planet will start getting cooler on its own raised many eyebrows. But there was no actionable plan by Trump to tackle the climate crisis. Biden, on the other hand, pitched his plan to invest in green infra, the Guardian reported.
"If we have four more years of Trump's climate denial, how many suburbs will be burned in wildfires, how many suburban neighborhoods will have been flooded out, how many suburbs will have been blown away in superstorms?" Biden asked. "If you give a climate arsonist four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised if we have more of America ablaze ... when more of America is under water?"
