Fire vs. Fire

Relating back to my previous article about the disaster of the volcano eruption, the recent fire in the Santa Barbara created a similar scenario regarding the community involved in the situation. The Thomas fire burned for more than a month burning over 10,000 houses and killing over 40 people. The fire truly took a toll on the community. It was considered one of the worst fires that the state of California has ever been on record. Many residents were evacuated including local schools such as the University of California, Santa Barbara. The strong winds added to the dry fields and and forests in southern California was a major cause of the fire. Firefighters fought endlessly to contain the fire to stop it from spreading to other parts of the county. After a month of fighting the fire, firefighters were eventually able to be 100% contained, leaving the citizens with the aftershock of the disaster. Crews managed by the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery have completed a six-month operation to remove debris left by the Thomas Fire in Ventura County. Since January, CalRecycle crews have removed over 263,000 tons of debris from the affected areas in Ventura county. Although the process of physically removing the debris from the neighborhoods is completed, officials have not yet cleared the area to be safe to rebuild property on.

In Ananya Roy’s Poverty Capital, she examines not the poor, but those who manage the poor. She analyzes the differences between the rich and the poor and the inequalities that lie between the two distinct groups. She also brings to attention the major role the the poverty plays in the economy and how we as a society fails to see that effect in the economy. The message that Roy hopes to provides to her readers is that the poor may seem worthless and not needed by society, but the reality is that poverty actually helps balance out the economy. If everyone in the world had money, there would no longer be a value to it leading to a lack of value to anything in the world. That would be a similar effect to the 2008 economy crash. During this crisis, money lost its value in society because everyone seemed to be doing well to the point where everyone was keeping their money to themselves and not spending it on anything causing the economy to be put on a brief hold.

The similarity between Ananya Roy’s Poverty Capital and the Thomas fire incident is that because of the disaster, the residents in that area of California have now lost thousands of dollars worth of property from the fire, those who do not have much money in their savings will now struggle to make it in society, which is also a similar case to my previous article about the volcano eruption in which the locals also began to suffer from the destruction of their property. These people must start from the bottom again and live with the bare minimum as they try their hardest to financially build their life back to normal. The affected people in these situations are either lucky to have money stored aside only for the extreme situations exactly like these, but those who are not so lucky are outcasted by society and are not treated with respect and equality like they should be. The poor have an important role in society because without them, our world could come crashing down…again.