why do people use property value as a metric of destruction? it's completely irrelevant to point out how $x amount of property has been destroyed, especially in los angeles where all the real estate is inflated. a $10b fire in los angeles destroys less homes and displaces less people than a $10b fire in west virginia the way people measure destruction needs to be in structures and infrastructure destroyed, and people displaced. a dollar figure is meaningless when they're all $20m malibu beach homes getting burned down (i'm aware that the altadena fire was a working class area) this is important because we can adjust the federal and state aid according to human cost, not the artificial real estate costs
Democrat