Trump gets blowback over lies about lack of water to fight record California fire
Los Angeles — Fire authorities have insisted they have ample water supplies to fight California’s devastating wildfires — contrary to US President Donald Trump’s tweets that unspecified water diversions to the Pacific were making matters worse. Officials from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire) and the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, stressed that wild-land blazes are battled primarily by crews hacking away at dry brush with hand tools and bulldozers, not with water. "Yes, we have plenty of water," CalFire chief Scott McLean said by telephone. He said the two largest blazes in California this week — the Carr Fire and the Mendocino Complex Fire — were each ringed by at least three major reservoirs. The Mendocino Complex Fire, made up of two separate conflagrations that merged, became the largest wildfire in Californian history on Monday, when it grew to 283,800 acres (114,800ha). It surpassed the Thomas Fire, which burned 281,893 acre...
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