Sarah’s relatives’ property after the fire. Own photo Text Machteld van Kempen
WUR is incredibly diverse, with hundreds of internationals working and studying here. In the Meanwhile In column, we ask one of them to comment on events in their home country. This time we hear from Sarah Dent (19), an exchange student from America, about the devastating wildfires a few weeks ago in her home state of California.
‘The fires were among the top five most destructive fires ever in Californian history. Over 10,000 buildings were lost. Clearly we don’t have the systems in place to deal effectively with these fires right now in terms of firefighters. Before the fires were even over, I read that 57 billion dollars of damage had been done. This scale of destruction is really not normal. It is disheartening to see those kind of things happen, and I think it will probably get worse in the future.
‘When I first heard about the fire, I didn’t pay much attention to it because forest fires in California are pretty normal. A day or two into the fire, my mum was like “Have you been reading the news? It’s really devastating what’s going on here.” Then I started to pay attention. A day later, my cousin’s house burned down. She and her family are now staying in an Airbnb. I think they can stay there for two months, but I don’t know what will happen after that. They have insurance, but we already have a housing crisis in California, so I am not sure what is going to happen to all the people who don’t have a place to live any more.
Garden
‘I haven’t been super in contact with my cousin’s family. I find it hard to know what to say after something big like this happens. It’s so sad. My uncle really loves to garden. Ever since they moved to this house nine years ago, he has been planting trees and plants, and he was really working on the landscaping. He was constantly making the garden better and now all that work has just gone in a matter of hours.’
