The rise of firefighters-for-hire exposes the inequality of climate-driven disasters

Ringo Chiu / Shutterstock by Doug Specht, University of Westminster The Los Angeles wildfires have exposed a controversial practice that starkly illustrates the divide between the city’s wealthy elite and the general population. As public firefighters struggle to cope, affluent residents and businesses have turned to private firefighting services to protect their properties. This trend has ignited a heated debate about inequality, the allocation of finite disaster defense resources, and the ethics of privatizing essential emergency services. We already see the effects of privatization of water and food in times of drought, with life-supporting items being unevenly distributed between rich and poor. As climate breakdown continues, further privatization could, for example, see sandbags be bought up in bulk and deployed by corporate rescue teams, leaving poorer areas of cities flooded. Or even extreme measures such as private aircraft creating artificial clouds through a process known as cloud seeding to induce rain over affluent areas. Demand for private firefighting services in California has been steadily increasing for a while, as the rich get richer and more frequent and intense wildfires put unprecedented pressure on public fire departments. Private firefighters guard this Hollywood Hills house from #SunsetFire. They’ve set up sprinklers to...