FILE - In this Monday, March 9, 2020, file photo, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti speaks at a news conference at the Capitol in Sacramento, Calif. In Los Angeles, Garcetti has instituted a shutdown on a city of nearly 4 million people and threatened uncooperative business owners with power shutoffs and arrest amid the new coronavirus pandemic. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)
L.A. mayor Eric Garcetti rips Trump’s response to wildfires: ‘This is climate change’
by David MatthewsLos Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti ripped President Trump Sunday over his frequent dismissal of climate science and blaming wildfires on forest management.
“It’s been very clear that years of drought, as we’re seeing, whether it’s too much water and too much rain in parts of our country right now, or too little,” Garcetti told CNN. “This is climate change and this is an administration that’s put its head in the sand.”
President Trump has said on multiple occasions that California and other western states would not experience wildfires if they raked leaves in their forests. Trump’s latest comments came during a rally in Nevada on Saturday.
“It is about forest management, please remember the words, very simply, forest management, please remember, about forest management, and other things,” Trump said.
Garcetti dismissed Trump’s assessment.
“We need to reduce the carbon emissions that we have, and we need to make sure we can manage that water,” Garcetti said. “This is not about just forest management or raking. Anybody who lives here in California is insulted by that, quite frankly, and (Trump) keeps perpetrating this lie.”
Trump is scheduled to visit California this week, several weeks after declaring a state of emergency over the fires.
“It’s easy to forget that it’s taken three weeks," Garcetti said. I’m glad he’s coming, but we need much more help when we have firefighters dying on the line and Washington refuses to help states and refuses to help local governments that are the first responders to emergencies like this, it’s unconscionable.”