Text | Sea passengers
As of 9:00 a.m. Beijing time today, the cumulative number of confirmed cases of new crown pneumonia in the United States has reached 6.636 million, and the existing confirmed cases remain at a high level of 2.52 million. For the American people, it is difficult to lay out a precise timetable when this epidemic is a head.
For the people of California, Oregon, Washington and other states in the western United States, under the fire of the epidemic, they now have to face the impact of mountain fires. Especially in Places like San Francisco, the sky over the city is shaded for many days, shrouded in dim yellow dust, and the difference in air quality is unimaginable!
In the face of the situation in which US politicians are ineffective in fighting the epidemic and repeatedly throwing pots at China, Uncle Hai is not particularly optimistic about whether the mountain fires in many states in the western United States can be extinguished as soon as possible. This time the American people may be more to call, "God bless America."
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Let's see how the wildfires develop. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite imagery shows that wildfire smoke continues to cover much of the U.S. West Coast, including all major cities on the West Coast. PM2.5 is generally well above the dangerous level of 300, and readings in some areas have even exceeded 600. In other words, the air quality in California in the western United States during this period is the worst in the world!
Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, USA
What is even more shocking is that the lives of Americans have been threatened by wildfires as the epidemic has claimed nearly 200,000 lives. Agence France-Presse reported that as of September 11, wildfires had killed 15 people and forced more than 500,000 people to leave their homes! Uncle Hai feels that the data released by AFP may be incomplete statistics, because police in Beautte County, northern California, say 10 people died in wildfires.
On the streets of San Francisco, you have to turn on the headlights during the day
How serious is the fire? And look at what the parties say --
According to the California Forestry and Fire Service, the Auguste Wildfire, which ravaged northwestern California, was the largest fire in California's history as of Sept. 10. At present, the area of fire has exceeded 3.1 million acres (about 12,500 square kilometers), the highest in the calendar year.
The more frustrating news is —
The wildfire season is expected to last for almost four months.
Oregon has more than one-tenth of the state's total population, and the state's overheated area is more than 900,000 acres (3,642 km2), more than double that of previous years!
Washington Gov. Jay Insley said a 1-year-old baby boy in the state died from a wildfire. At the time of the incident, the parents tried to take the baby out of the fire, and at the same time as the baby died, the parents were seriously burned. The area of Washington State has also reached nearly 2426 square kilometers.
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Why are wildfires in the United States burning so much? What are the U.S. authorities doing? In China, there are indeed people who have this doubt - the United States is the most developed country in the world, and California is the most populous and economically developed state in the United States, so strange things have happened! However, it is not at all strange for Uncle Hai to say that such a thing happened in the United States! For both federal and state governments, calculate the economic costs to decide when to intervene in disaster relief or not at all. For example, mountain fires are not a big deal for state governments. They think that some places in the west are sparsely populated, and when the mountain fires first appeared, they did not rescue them, but also called themselves to protect nature, let the mountain fires survive on their own, and maintain the ecological balance. But when the fire is uncontrollable? Is it to let the biggest record in history be broken one by one?
In Monrovia, California, the sky is shrouded in smoke and dust from wildfires
There is no unified action at the federal level, no support from all sides of the states, no fireshot states joining forces to fight the fire, and some just fighting separately.
For example, there are at least 14,000 firefighters in California who, like American health workers on the front line of the fight against the epidemic, need a better and more efficient command system. Instead of just prevaricating, as US President Trump did. As early as August 20, when the wildfires were just rising, Trump said on social media that local officials were always responsible for fires in California, and that they did not clean up the fallen leaves on the ground in time, so they caused the fires. This is when the epidemic in the United States just emerged, Trump blamed the governor of New York for not fighting the epidemic, how similar is it?
In 2018, Trump inspected the hardest hit areas of wildfires in California
The question is, as the leader of the country, shouldn't Trump predict in advance that there will be fire in the West? During the 2018 California fires, Mr. Trump visited and was stunned to call Paradise town, which had been burned to ruins, "Pleasure town." This year's fire is like this, I don't know if Trump, who is entering the election, has time to go to California to guide the work?
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Uncle Hai wants to say that the United States is a big country, even if it is the world's largest economy, but in the face of natural and man-made disasters, it is inevitable that there will be times of stretching. At this time, we should have sympathy. However, whether it is fighting against fire or fighting the epidemic, can things be rectified to this point, shouldn't the Trump administration reflect? On the other hand, when something happens in China this year – whether it's the epidemic in Wuhan at the beginning of the year, or the waterlogging in some cities after the torrential rains, or even just Chinese people are more concerned about food security, these topics can be hyped by some US politicians as the material of the "China collapse theory". Helplessness was for them – China was the first to contain the epidemic; China's floods this year were quickly carried by the People's Liberation Army and the people working together. So, shouldn't the United States take care of its own affairs first?