The shock doctrine. Private equity will buy up land for pennies on the dollar, they’ll drive out poor people, install charter schools, replace normal houses with mansions and built-to-AirBNBs.
All this has happened before and all this will happen again.
Don’t they have paid firefighters for the rich and volunteers for everyone else? I think I remember hearing about Oprah’s property being protected first when Hawaii was burning last. I would expect something similar in California. Money talks.
It’s not volunteers actually, it’s prisoners being used as forced labor https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/08/la-wildfires-incarcerated-firefighters
Most of firefighters in California, at least those fighting wildfires, are prison inmates, which is constitutionally slave labour.
That is all true, but I think OP is talking about news channels monetizing wildfire
There was one post where I learned that several sites were locking information about the fires behind paywalls. Commenter went to 3 or 4 sites before finding one they could actually read.