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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

Some may want to come in here leaving snarky comments about how they shouldn't vote for an administration that doesn't believe in climate change. But I will give a concrete example:

This administration fired thousands of Forrest Service and BLM employees at the start of the administration last year. Those workers were the ones that were responsible for the maintenance of these lands and for the fire lookout programs.

Maybe they couldn't have prevented this fire, but it's pretty clear these fires are much worse today because of those firings last year.

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This administration also impaired FEMA’s ability to provide disaster response to those impacted by this event.

I’m not sure if these fires are correlated with the staff reductions in BLM. In the interview with a resident she doesn’t mention anything about that, just that last year was very wet which provided a lot of fuel and this hot dry spring has turned it into a tinder box.

BLM provides fire lookout services that were severely cut. They also perform prescribed burns, which they no longer have staff and budget for, which would have reduced the dry grass.

I seriously doubt ranchers were politically against OPM being used for fire prevention funding. Agriculture industry is well known to be highly socialist politically when it comes to agriculture subsidies.

Of course they weren't but look at how Nebraska voted in the last election. Other than the cities, it was mostly GOP, the party that explicitly said they would cut funding for those services if elected (it was in Project 2025).

"Other than the cities." Omaha recently hit the 1M mark, which includes that near part of Iowa. Lincoln has around 300k. So causally for a state total of 2M, around 700k dispersed. Compare this with the fires and controlled burn issues in Colorado, or the 'red' part of Colorado, compare population. But we like smoking pot in Denver/Boulder, so we will pretend there aren't more Trump voters, regular issues with fires (under Obama anyone) etc, N is for narrative. I didn't vote for Trump and I have experience seeing many perspectives in both of these states. 700k people and 2 electoral votes didn't throw the election. "Trump won statewide in Nebraska, as well as in the 1st and 3rd Congressional Districts, picking up four electoral votes. Harris carried the Omaha-based 2nd Congressional District and its electoral vote." I suppose Boulder voted for its fentanyl problems as well.

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