WHEN it comes to devastating natural disasters, numbers alone don’t tell the entire story. If the California fires were to have happened in New York, most Guyanese would have a better understanding of the sheer scale of its catastrophic footprint, and perhaps also better grasp the untold suffering of the thousands whose lives have been shattered.

Imagine for a moment that the entire island of Manhattan, all 15,000 acres of it, were swept away in a ferocious fire. Apocalyptic — that’s how most of us would describe it. And yet more than 22,661 acres of the Pacific Palisades alone have been charred beyond recognition.

One of LA’s safest and most affluent communities, the Palisades, is home to some 27,000 residents. It has some of the best public schools, and stunning natural beauty with parks and hiking trails and in most areas, the sunset view of the Pacific Ocean is enough to take one’s breath away.

As of today, 11 people have lost their lives, close to 10,000 buildings have been destroyed and 37,000 acres have been ravaged by the fires in California. The fires have opened up a debate over the management of public spaces and the ownership of life-saving resources such as water.

Having lived in Canada for over four decades, I have an acute awareness that on hot summer days no one is allowed to BBQ in parks or use an open pit to start a campfire at night. A homeowner can’t just light a fire in his backyard.

Now that I am a re-migrant to Guyana, I am constantly shocked out of my mind at the number of fires that are lit by individuals, apparently numb to the consequences of their own actions. In April last year, at the height of the dry season, there were approximately 1000 VIIRS fires in Regions Five and Six.

VIIRS, or Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite, identifies global fire locations in near-real time. VIIRS is a product of the Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS), a free web-mapping platform offered by NASA. Curious, I checked it out around midday on January 11 and there were hundreds of active fires in Guyana, most of them appearing as red clusters in Regions Eight and Nine. By comparison, Guyana’s red dots are not as bad when compared to Mexico, north-east Brazil or Central African states.

I anticipate that what I found on NASA’s FIRMS might not come as much of a surprise to Guyana’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) or for that matter, the Minister of Home Affairs, Robeson Benn, who has repeatedly said—and– warned that most fires stem “from spontaneous combustion, human-induced land clearing and waste destruction” and he has appealed to Guyanese “to cease burning garbage and other waste materials.”

I feel a whole lot safer knowing that this government is committed to giving modern firefighting equipment to the Guyana Fire Service. Just last week, President Irfaan Ali handed over a brand-new fleet of 40 rapid intervention vehicles, three new ambulances and three new bowsers to the Guyana Fire Service.

The newly acquired vehicles will service 40 Neighbourhood Democratic Councils in Region Four. President Ali instructed volunteer firefighting groups to be established at all NDCs and be paid for their service. What is even more remarkable, is that the president announced that 500 new hydrants will be installed across Georgetown and in new urban centres that have a large number of residents.

Why did hydrant firefighters in California? Two days ago, Rolling Stone magazine ran an image of a burning hydrant with the following headline: “What happened with California’s water supply during the wildfires? A viral post on social media took to blaming California billionaires Stewart and Lynda Resnick for the rapid spread of the fires in Pacific Palisades. The Resnick couple are the owners of Wonderful Company, one of the largest agricultural companies in the world. More importantly, Wonderful Company has a controlling stake in the Kern Water Bank, a reservoir in California’s Central Valley with an underground capacity of 488 billion gallons of water.

The Resnicks had made a backroom deal in 1994 that would allow them “to reserve enough water for their farm empire and sell water back to the state in times of drought; Mother Jones described them in a 2016 headline as “the California Couple Who Uses More Water Than Every Home in Los Angeles Combined.”

However, according to Rolling Stone, L.A. ran out of water because there was “a problem directing it to places where demand was at its most extreme, combined with ecological factors, an understaffed fire department, and the fact that municipal hydrant systems simply aren’t suitable for containing fires on this unprecedented scale.”

The Resnicks may be social media’s convenient villains, but they don’t explain the reason for the fires. Still, the Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, directed state water and fire officials to conduct an independent investigation into the causes of the “lost water supply and water pressure in municipal water systems.”

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.