More Than Five Million Acres Have Burned in West Coast’s Wildfires

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California met with President Trump on Monday in McClellan Park, near Sacramento, thanking him for federal help and agreeing that forest management could be better — while also noting that 3 percent of land in California is under state control, compared with 57 percent under federal control. The governors of all three states stressed that climate change had made fires more dangerous, drying forests with rising heat and priming them to burn, science that on Monday the president denied.

“The rules of fighting wildfires are changing because our climate is changing,” Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington wrote in an open letter on Monday. “There is no fire suppression plan on this planet that does anyone any good if it doesn’t even acknowledge the role of climate change.”

Addressing Mr. Trump directly, he wrote, “I hope you had an enlightening trip to the West Coast, where your refusal to address climate change — and your active steps to allow even more carbon pollution — will accelerate devastating wildfires like you are seeing today.”

In Senator Kamala Harris’s first appearance in California, her home state, since her Democratic vice-presidential nomination, she met with Gov. Gavin Newsom and local officials and firefighters in Auberry. The community was ravaged by the Creek Fire, which has destroyed nearly 600 structures in Fresno and Madera Counties.

“It is incumbent on us, in terms of the leadership of this nation,” she said, “to take seriously these new changes in our climate and to do what we can to mitigate against the damage.”