There are, of course, many differences between the experience of New Orleans two years ago and San Diego today. The urban core of San Diego and Los Angeles and their infrastructure remain intact. Utilities and other essential services are still in place, and the death toll is far lower. Property losses are estimated at several billion dollars, mainly from destroyed homes as well as crop damage in San Diego County; the damage from Hurricane Katrina was at least 50 times as great.

By all accounts, the response of emergency services, particularly the fire and rescue units, has been far more effective than during Hurricane Katrina, reflecting both the lesser scale of the disaster, the more developed social infrastructure of California (Louisiana being one of the poorest US states) and the lessons learned from the dismal response to the inundation of New Orleans. Perhaps the greatest difference in the response, however, is that the rich as well as the poor suffered in southern California, and they can call on society’s resources far more easily.

As in Hurricane Katrina, the wildfires in southern California have laid bare the social crisis of a country riven by class inequality and imprisoned in an economic system dominated by the profit interests of a tiny minority of millionaires and billionaires. The richest country in the world, able to wage two wars simultaneously on the other side of the world, is incapable of providing adequate resources for so elementary a public service as firefighting.

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