By Lou Victoria-Etoundi Ntsama
Since August 15th, wildfires have turned Northern California into a battlefield between flames and firefighters. It is incredible to think that this devastation was caused by a simple gender reveal party. Indeed, the couple throwing the gender reveal party used fireworks, and as you can see, it did not go well.
The fires progressed quickly, burning 8,600 acres in 3 days. They continued to progress everyday and destroyed everything in its passage. Sadly, only 7% of the fires are currently contained. In Colorado and other western states during this period of the year, trees are dryer than at other times of the year and can be very flammable. Because of this tragedy, people from Oak Glen, Yucaipa Ridge, Mountain Home Village and Forest Halls were the first communities to evacuate. Other cities followed not late after. The whole fire force in the area has been requested to fight the flames. Overnight, the fire in El Dorado continued to burn because of the hot weather.
Ironically, it is not the first time that a gender-reveal party caused a wildfire. Already in Arizona in 2017, a party sparked a wildfire, causing a lot of damage to the surrounding communities. Even right now, the wildfires are still devastating the country and the smoke is even moving in other states or even in Europe because of the wind.
The fires are supposed to last for weeks because of the dry weather coming during the weekend of September 25th. The situation worries the authorities. “A ridiculously long-lasting upper ridge of high pressure will likely deliver 1-2 weeks of warm to hot and dry weather to the drought and wildfire stricken forecast area Sunday through the foreseeable future,” says the National Weather Service in Oregon.
The situation at the moment is not improving, but we hope the firefighters will stay strong enough to defeat the flames.
