To not want to hear any more about the Californian fires

[Viviennemary]

For a start I do feel a lot of sympathy for folk who have lost everything in those fires. But what is the point of telling us night after night about the devastation these fires are causing, we can't do anything about it nobody can. And America is a rich country and can afford to rebuild. Unlike Gaza where folk have been left with nothing, and hardly had much in the first place.

The BBC can't seem to find any other news. It filled the ten o'clock news last night then took up the first half of newsnight.

Why does everything come back to Gaza- this is a tragedy in its own right. You might have more than most suffering in the Middle East doesn’t mean you’d be fine to see everything burned to ash.

Yeah I'm bored of it too. Rich people have their houses burned down. OK, really sad. Some of the scenes are apocalyptic. Yes, it is newsworthy. But does it have to be on ALL the fucking time? Surely other stuff is going on they could report on.

Why is Gaza more important than Syria, the Uyghars or anything else? The worst fires in history in a country that is our closest ally is
pretty important news to most right-thinking people. Makes more sense than fretting about Gaza - a place that we share no cultural ties with. If anything our values are antithetical.

Free the hostages.

Why use Gaza for comparison though? We have been seeing news about Gaza since October 3rd (and rightly so). But it’s not like it hasn’t been covered? There are so many conflicts and tragedies that don’t even make the news, yet other stories dominate. Right now it’s the fires.

October 7th I should say!

Do you shoehorn Gaza into everything? I bet you’re a riot at school pick-ups.

I feel the same about this and gaza. Once again it shows people for their hypocrisy because its been happening pretty much everyday for over a year now on our screens. Celebs who have never said a word about it are now piping up so sympathetic to all of their filthy rich friends.

Personally I disagree, this is a massively important story and a huge catastrophe, so of course it's going to be the main news story this week. Very high risk this sort of thing will happen all around the world if climate change continues unabated.

Yeah I'm bored of it too. Rich people have their houses burned down

Some of the firefighters & police officers have lost homes, are they rich?

It’s not just rich people! Goodness me 😞

Unlike Gaza

What’s the relevance of Gaza? This is a big news story because of the Hollywood/celeb angle & climate change/nature.

Bloody hell. The huge majority of people who have lost their homes there are not rich at all.

There’s been plenty of other news reported. News programmes don’t just report one story. Have you even watched the news? There’s been lots about the economy, Donald Trump, Liz Truss, grooming gangs etc during the past few days.

News is very much driven by analytics these days. If people didn’t want to hear about the fires and weren’t engaging with the stories then the coverage would dry up PDQ.

Are you joking? We've been hearing nothing but Gaza Gaza Gaza for years, this has just happened?? Of course it will be covered, it's the worst fire in California history.

Honestly, people's obsession with comparing everything to Gaza does nothing but stops people having empathy for it. We can be sad for these people and still be sad for Gaza.
Every single world event is filled with comments about Gaza.

And the people that have no sympathy for California because it's "rich", these people have lost sentimental things, their homes, everything. Being rich makes it easier to rebuild but it's still extremely sad. And a lot of these people have had their houses for years, and their wealth was the house....that is now gone!

Have some compassion people!!!

Wait where do school runs fit into this hahah

The fires aren't about rich people though
The majority of those who have lost everything will he normal people like you. Imagine it!!

It's also a disgrace western media aren't covering the suffering in Gaza but we have a west leaning media and so not at all surprising.

OP you should do a search on other current wars to broaden your interest. I hope you are not thinking that Gaza is the biggest current tragedy.

Exactly. There is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. There is a war in Ukraine. There’s a civil war in Myanmar about which we hear almost nothing. And many other conflicts and crises in the world.

But these fires are a huge story in the sense of not just what is happening but also what it foretells for the future. We are now living in a time of climate change; weather is going to become increasingly unpredictable and tragedies will get closer and closer to home. (This one feels fairly close to home for me as my cousin’s house burned down.) Did you also get bored of the reporting on the Spanish floods?

Well California has a massive homeless issue not everyone is rich nor can escape without help and the devastation to the wildlife is going to be something else.

It's ok to feel bad about more than one thing at once. Gaza is bad, the fires are bad, the levels of poverty in the world's 6th richest country are bad, the Rochdale child rape gangs are bad. We don't have to assess which we should feel most bad about, we can feel all of them are.

The Americans are going to have to get used to it unfortunately as there'll be more fires going forward. They've just voted in a president who doesn't believe in climate change. ......

Plenty of normal, everyday people have lost their homes too. I will admit this is personal to me. My old home is in the evacuation area. It was a rent controlled hovel with a dodgy landlord, but it was mine when I was young and just starting out.

The news may be focusing on the celebrities, but normal people have lost everything.

It must be devastating and terrifying but the newsclip that pissed me off the most today was that woman going on and on and on at the poor mayor (?) who was trying to phone the president and she was yelling, 'I wanna hear the call, when's someone gonna do something, I wanna hear the call!' Poor guy stayed really calm.

Considering we've had multiple catastrophic natural events all over the world in the last few weeks - why do Californians think the president can do something about wildfire?

It's just bonkers.

Climate change is here.