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  • 2017-10-17 (xsd:date)
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  • Did 'Mexican Drug Cartels' Start the California Wildfires? (en)
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  • As wildfires caused devastation in parts of California in the fall of 2017, conspiracy theories about their causes followed quickly behind. On 14 October 2017, the web site Got News claimed that law enforcement officials and cannabis industry figures believe that Mexican drug cartels are to blame for starting the fires: The article cites stories by the New York Times and NBC News, who reported that among the areas damaged by the fires are several cannabis farms. Similar versions of this conspiracy theory were also picked up and published by Proud Patriots, Freedom Daily, and the Gateway Pundit. The Got News article can most charitably be described as thinly sourced, claiming that anonymous law enforcement officials and cannabis industry leaders believe that cartels had a hand in starting the historically destructive fires. However, there is no statement attributed to anyone, even an unnamed person. A spokesperson for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection told us the investigation into the fires was still ongoing and that it could be a matter of months before a cause or causes are determined. However, there is ample evidence to implicate windblown power lines in at least some of the wildfires: Although it doesn't contain any evidence to support its central claim, the Got News article does contain references to earlier reporting about the damage that wildfires have caused to marijuana crops in California. For example, it quotes an 13 October 2017 New York Times report: According to an NBC News report: Both these articles were about the effects of the fires on the marijuana crop, an industry that has economically transformed the region and whose loss affects a significant number of residents. Neither of these source articles contain any mention of drug cartels, nor any speculation about what (or who) might have caused the wildfires in the first place. The fact that California's nascent legal marijuana industry has been badly affected by the fires does not, of course, logically require or even suggest that the fire was started by those involved in the illegal drug trade. The article also claims that the timing of the October 2017 wildfires is suspicious, adding that they usually occur in December and January, not October. This is false; October, as any Californian can tell you, is the height of fire season. In fact, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection's annual wildfire reports show that there were more wildfires in October than both January and December, every year between 2008 and 2015, apart from 2014, when January saw 283 fires, as opposed to 172 in October. According to statistics published by the California's Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, arson (the cause claimed by Got News) was responsible for just 0.37 percent of the 291,282 acres of land burned by wildfires in the state in 2015 and 7.8 percent of fires overall. Electrical power lines and electrical equipment caused 76 percent of wildfire damage between them. Got News is a disreputable web site run by the infamous internet troll Chuck C. Johnson, and has previously published thinly sourced and fabricated claims and often-xenophobic conspiracy theories. (en)
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