POTUS Donald Trump announced he will meet emergency services in California on Monday as record fires that have killed 27 souls extinguished the West Coast in dense smog.
Officials warned of further casualties with swathes of land in California, Oregon and Washington still cut off by blazes fired by tinder-dry conditions, as presidential challenger Joe Biden linked the fires to climate change.
The unprecedented infernos have now blazed through nearly 5 million acres (2 million hectares), an area roughly the size of New Jersey.
President Trump prepares to meet with the heads of California’s emergency services, battling fires that have scorched more than 3.2 million acres in the state this year — an annual record, with nearly four months of the fire season still to come.
He has made a little comment about the blazes in recent weeks, but at a Nevada campaign event on Saturday he acknowledged the scope of the disaster.
“They never had anything like this,” Trump said. “Please remember the words, very simple, forest management.”
But Biden, expressing earlier, said the causes were much more comprehensive: “The science is clear, and deadly signs like these are unmistakable — climate change poses an imminent, existential threat to our way of life.”
