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@jeffcliff RE: https://www.threads.net/@aaron.rupar/post/DEkwdLzg7gh

As someone who has been a Californian for most of my life, there are some issues there

* the state doesn't do many prescribed burns because one got out of control and became a major fire some years back

* the state does need more water storage, but most of these wildland fires happen far away from places where that matters

* the state also needs to go hard on desalination plants, so it isn't so dependent on the El Nino for its water needs, but again that has little to do with fires outside of urban & suburban areas.

As for FEMA, I have no insight into how disaster relief funds supposedly got used to care for illegal immigrants (I say "supposedly" because I don't even know whether it is true), but I suppose that if the big guy says "I'm declaring this a disaster" they have to fund it.

That's basically what happened with COVID-19 response. There were something like 55 simultaneous disaster declarations funding things like the military medical teams that came and set up adjacent to hospitals that were overwhelmed with sick and dying patients (including the one that was a mile or so away from where I lived at the time ... I remember seeing giant green MASH tents in the hospital parking lot) and vaccination centers (like the one near where I was working ... I took my lunch break and walked over to get my vax one day, did it again a couple of weeks later).

California, and Los Angeles County, also have their own emergency departments. I don't have any idea what kind of budgets they have. If the federal folks don't have the budget to respond, the state and local folks may.

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