The West is a Mess

By Christian Silva

It is no doubt that the events of the last year will leave a lasting scar on the world for years to
come. The year of 2020, a year full of promises and hope has turned into a year that will live in
history books for the remainder of time. The Coronavirus headlines the year but with the deaths
of multiple celebrities along with political and social unrest throughout it, it’s enough to make
anyone scared to step outside.
No other part of the world however has been hit worse than the American West. This is made
very clearly by New York Times opinion writer Timothy Egan in his opinion piece “I’ve Never
Seen the American West in Such Deep Distress.”
When it looks like the year could not get any worse for a country that has been struggling the
most with the pandemic, our entire west coast seems to be up in flames as well. Timothy Egan
states that over 330,000 acres of evergreen state burned last night, and even more are continuing
to burn while this article is being typed right now. Along with the acres of scorched land over 5
million trees have burned due to the result of forest fires alone this year.
As far as I am concerned Timothy Egan is completely justified in feeling that the American West
has felt the brunt of 2020 and all the ill it has brought along with it. Not only does he use facts
and statistics to bring his point across but he uses emotion as well. This really brings into the
forefront how close to home theses fires are for some people. Something this massive and ground
shaking is in people’s backyards, and there is nothing they can do to stop it. Families forced to
re-locate in a time where hundreds of people are still dying from the Coronavirus alone. It is so
hard to imagine this a year ago.
A “hellscape” as Timothy Egan puts it is an image that brings fear along with it. With “Martian-
red skies” filling the evening air with no trace of the beautiful blue many western Americans are
used to seeing. Unfortunately, “the citizens of these affected areas are not seeing any remorse
from governments’ top officials on top of everything else.
Timothy quotes the president in the article with the quote saying “You gotta clean your floors,
you gotta clean your forests,” which is essentially putting all the blame of the fires on California
state and cleansing his hands of any responsibility. As far as I am concerned that is cause for
distress, most definitely the most distress Timothy has seen in the American West in his whole
life.
To be in the middle of an ongoing pandemic with no end in sight is bad enough as it is, to be in
the part of the country that is struggling the most with containing it is even worse. Add a blazing
fire that turns the sky red, then you got someone who agrees fully with Timothy Egan.