WASHINGTON (TNND) — Joe Scarborough, the former Florida congressman who hosts “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, claimed Friday the wildfires in southern California are going to lead to a situation “like Hurricane Katrina” because of poor infrastructure and climate change.
He suggested there are parallels to the factors which made Katrina so destructive. The 2005 hurricane resulted in more than 1,800 deaths and approximately $108 billion in damage, according to the National Weather Service.
“Infrastructure has been slashed. You can’t just say it’s Karen Bass. You can’t just say it’s Gavin Newsom,” Scarborough said, referring to the Los Angeles mayor and California governor, respectively. “This has been a trend for 30 years. Infrastructure has been slashed across America.”
There should have been more water tanks for the area, according to Scarborough, who further claimed that climate change contributed to the fires.
“So, you have wildfires sweeping into urban areas. They’re kind of like fighting the last war,” Scarborough said.
“But, I just – the longer we get into this, the more I think about how New Orleans didn’t invest in their levy system, how they didn’t invest in critical infrastructure, and people died because of it,” he continued. “And, it’s hard to hear people say in one of the richest cities in the world that, ‘oh, we just – we don’t have enough water to protect people’s homes.’”
Scarborough claims the effects of climate change and “urban sprawl” – people moving to uninhabited places – have impacted the safety of the Los Angeles area.
“This should be a wake-up call – very late – but a wake-up call, not only to Los Angeles and to California, but to politicians, local, state politicians across America that you have to fight the new battle,” he added.
“And, with urban sprawl, with climate change, with people moving into flood zones, with people moving into zones where there’s wildfires, something is gonna give,” Scarborough continued. “It happened in Katrina. It’s happened here.”
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