EDITORIAL: Could Trump comfort victims before tossing insults?

Nov. 5--Here we go again.

Firefighters are working to complete a containment line around the Kincade fire in Sonoma County and battling several brush fires in Southern California, and President Donald Trump is yowling about the state's failure to "clean the forest floor." Again.

And he's threatening to cut off aid to California. Again.

Maybe someone will show him a map -- or hand him a rake. Shutting off his Twitter account, as appealing as that sounds, probably is too much to ask.

We're grateful that there has been no loss of life and that the firefighters risking their lives on the front lines have reported only a few minor injuries. But several hundred people have lost their homes in California's last round of fires, still more homes have been damaged, and the danger hasn't passed. There was a time not so long ago when presidents could be counted on to comfort the victims of disasters, natural and otherwise.

Can anyone forget Barack Obama singing "Amazing Grace" at the funeral of a South Carolina pastor killed in a mass shooting at her church in 2015? Or George W. Bush speaking atop the rubble at the World Trade Center in 2001? Or President Ronald Reagan's eloquent speech after the space shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986?

Rather than speaking to those faced with rebuilding, or even employing a tired platitude like thoughts and prayers, Trump launched an ill-informed partisan attack on California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who until then had offered nothing but praise for the Trump administration's assistance with the fires.

"The Governor of California, @GavinNewsom, has done a terrible job of forest management," Trump said in a tweet Sunday morning. "I told him from the first day we met that he must "clean" his forest floors regardless of what his bosses, the environmentalists, DEMAND of him. Must also do burns and cut fire stoppers....."

Trump wasn't finished, adding a tweet targeting Congressman Adam Schiff of Burbank, whose committee is preparing for impeachment hearings: "Corrupt Adam should clean up & manage the California forests which are always burning!"

Trump's self-absorption and lack of compassion aren't surprising. Unfortunately, neither is ignorance of the location or cause of California's fall fires.

None of the major fires presently burning can be accurately characterized as a forest fire. It's true that the Kincade fire started in a forested area near The Geysers geothermal fields, but it spread quickly to vineyards and chaparral, eventually threatening residential areas in Windsor.

The most destructive of the Southern California fires broke out on a hillside in densely populated west Los Angeles, burning a dozen homes near the Getty Museum. Another started on a hillside near the Reagan library in Simi Valley, a city of 125,000 people on the edge of Los Angeles. Still other fires are burning in agricultural and residential areas.

Moreover, unlike the federal government, which owns 57% of the 33 million acres of forestland in California and recently cut waste removal efforts, the state has stepped up its spending on fire prevention, with a five-year, $1 billion commitment to vegetation management.

Scientists and fire-prevention experts say climate change, which is intensifying heat and drying out fuel, is a major contributor to the increasing size and intensity of California's wildfires. The Trump administration, meanwhile, served notice Monday that the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate accord.

Fire victims hoping for sympathy from President Trump are likely to find themselves waiting for a long time. But state and local agencies are staffing an assistance center at the Healdsburg Community Center, ready to help victims replace birth certificates, drivers licenses and other vital records, and handle tax issues and other post-fire issues. Let the rebuilding begin.

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