California

With the fire still raging we can see the discussion on the cause already flaming with the same intensity. This is strange. Normally after a disaster we sympathise with the dead, the people who lost loved ones and those who lost houses and other property. The last three years we start to omit this habit, and even when the disaster is striking discussions on the cause, the effectiveness of the authorities engulf our moment of mourning and empathy. This is wrong, simply because the cause of a disaster is almost always compound and complex and in the emergency phase we need all our focus on the emergency, working on who and what can be saved. Firemen were discredited while risking their lives, mayors held accountable for not interrupting foreign trips and the sexual preferences of professionals put in the open as if is relevant for their functioning.

The reason for this simultaneous raging of anger with the disaster can be attributed to social media, but then, also three years ago, social media were existing and not capable of filtering random accusations from their platforms. I fear that a second phenomenon is playing out, a phenomenon that is political and based on vested interests, and that explains the impatience, and the speed at which accusations are ventilated with the disaster still in course. Disasters that coincide with this impatience single cause searching, are all weather driven disasters, mainly fires and floods. The floods in Valencia were not caused by extreme local rainfall, no, dam removal, in other watersheds, were to blame, the fires in Los Angeles were not caused by extreme winds following a failed rain season, no they were caused by lesbian fireman, cuts in the investments on the fire brigade and the lack of racking the forest or what is left over of that in a villa neighbourhood. And with all fires, also last year in Greece, the blame is on arson, the cause of fire is intentional, as if thunder, the only natural cause of fire would be the cause in the past.

What we clearly see is that disasters, in which climate heating plays a role, are immediately hijacked by other potential causes. Sometimes too ridiculous to debunk, but anyway avoiding in advance a debate on cost of the already felt climate heating. Climate scientist try, despite all this turmoil, to attribute the cost of these disasters in a new discipline called attribution. Basically they put a price tag on the disaster using a discussed methodology. Insurance companies and governments are of course looking at this to the great fear of the various economic sectors that contribute most to climate change. For now the price tag is pushed to insurance companies, which in their turn increase the price of their products, to be paid by the insured party. What the major contributors of climate heating absolutely want to avoid is that this price tag is pushed to them. Hence the lesbian fire fighter is scapegoated.  Or whoever is recognisable in some way.

This process paralyses not only the public debate, but also anybody fighting the disaster once it occurs. In will lead to less firefighters, less public servants willing to make a bold decision and finally uninsured objects. In Italy, after the Aquila earthquake legal authorities accused geologists of not calling for evacuation in the onset of the big earthquake. This legalistic behaviour has led to an abstention of any formal advice from the professional sector. Disasters are complex, they bring together extremes of nature and lack of adaptation to this of humans and economic sectors. Looking for a human being to blame, can be logic, if obvious errors are made. But if the price is that every sensible person abstains from being somehow involved in the disaster than the disaster will just be even bigger than without the people who make errors.  Therefore helping the victims should be the first priority, thereafter comes the time and patience to learn from the errors. With the advantage that the emotions are back to normal since other and new events required attention. Once we accept the complexity and thus also the beauty of our weather, our landscapes and our seas than we can be helpful during moments of devastation. Irrespective of climate change and interests of polluting economic sectors. In Dutch we stay, do not move while being shaved. And they are being shaved during moment of extreme weather. They knew it, know it and will know it, and better get used to it instead of exacerbating the pain even more by not being empathic with those who actually help during the disaster.