“Los Angeles looks like a Third World country,” he tells Renaissance Tony Lima, Portuguese resident in the city for almost 40 years.
At a time when the flames continue to advance, now towards the center of Hollywood, this actor and businessman in the transport sector describes a “very chaotic situation” with unpredictable developments in the coming hours.
Tony Lima lives “between Universal Studios and Warner Brothers”, in an area that, so far, has not been hit hard by the flames. “In an hour or two you won’t know.”
“Everything in the air, in an instant”
In contacts maintained over the last few hours with friends and clients, this Portuguese man speaks of “several friendly people” who had to be removed from Hollywood Boulevard, as a precaution.
Even in Pacific Palisades, one of the most affected areas, “I have a client linked to American football who owns a large marble and construction materials company. The family lost their home worth more than seven million dollars. Everything went live, in an instant”
Disinvestment in firefighters, dry fire hydrants
To date, there have been five confirmed fatalities and many thousands of hectares of burned area.
For Tony Lima, this scenario is the responsibility of the federal government of California, which, he says, has cut funding for the civil protection device.
“In addition to having cut the budget of more than 17 million dollars for firefighters in Los Angeles, when they arrived at the fire hydrants in various parts of the city, they laid the hoses and nothing came out… everything is dry”, he points out.
The businessman denounces what he says is the lack of vision of Governor Gavin Newsom, “who has done absolutely nothing to clean the forests” and “prefers to send water that would be needed to the Pacific Ocean, to try to protect a rare species of fish tiny”.
“It is still contradictory, in a region that is a powerhouse in wealth production”, he concludes.
Source: rr.sapo.pt
