Fires in the American West: Donald Trump will visit the site on Monday

Difficult traffic management while repairing power lines following a fire in Obenchain, Oregon on September 11, 2020. REUTERS / Adrees Latif

Text by: RFI Follow

3 min

President Donald Trump has announced that he will travel to California on Monday, September 13 to take stock of the fires that are ravaging the entire American West.

The death toll stands at 27 dead this summer and more than two million hectares burned since the start of the year.

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Donald Trump is due to meet this Monday with officials of the emergency services, on the front line to fight fires that have already charred 1.2 million hectares in California this year, a record.

Adding to the burnt vegetation in Oregon and Washington State, wildfires have consumed more than two million hectares, while the fire season theoretically does not end until November.

Along with Portland, San Francisco and Seattle were among the cities with the highest pollution rates in the world on Saturday, according to the ranking established by the company IQAir.

400,000

On the spot, the authorities were preparing for the worst once the help was able to return to areas still inaccessible.

A total of at least 19 casualties were recorded this week in the three affected west coast states, but it was still impossible to assess the true extent of the destruction.

More than 400,000 hectares went to ashes in Oregon, where seven deaths were recorded this week.

Relief has no news from dozens of other people.

The threatened areas concern

in this state, and a little more than 40,000 people had actually been evacuated Friday at midday.

Climate change involved

In neighboring California, the toll of the week rose this Saturday to eleven victims of the flames, including nine in Butte County alone, still traumatized by the memory of the fires of November 2018 which had made 86 dead and reduced the city to ashes. from Paradise.

Eight people had already died in the fires in August.

For local authorities and many experts, the scale of these wildfires, which extend from Canada to Mexico, is undoubtedly linked to climate change, which exacerbates

and causes extreme weather conditions.

This is also the opinion of Joe Biden, the Democratic opponent of President Trump in the presidential election of November, who denounced Saturday " 

 ".

( 

AFP)

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