President Donald Trump visited California last week

President Donald Trump visited California last week and has authorized federal assistance to states on the West Coast to fight forest fires that have burned more than 1.9 million acres of trees.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, desperate not to let Trump have any positive media attention for conducting his presidential duties, went on the attack.

Biden blamed Trump for the fires because the President does not worship at the altar of the climate change religion.

“This is another crisis, another crisis he won’t take responsibility for,” Biden said of Trump. “If you give a climate denier four more years in the White House, why would we be surprised that we have more America ablaze?”

Before Biden’s attack, Trump has said poor forest management techniques are the real reason these fires have burned out of control.

“When trees fall down after a short period of time, they become very dry – really like a matchstick ... and they can explode,” Trump said.

My family has some timberland so I understand the advantage of forest management. Trump is right that good forest management can make a difference in controlling fires during the dry season.

Far-left environmentalists want forests left in their “natural state” with no changes from mankind. When trees die, they will dry out and fall to the forest floor where dry leaves are already there providing flammable material.

Good management techniques involved things like removing dead trees, cutting fire breaks into forests, thinning trees and — to the horror of “natural forest worshipers” — controlled burns to remove underbrush.

Such management techniques make forests healthier than just leaving everything untouched.

Climate change priests say leaving dead trees to rot and return to the soil is better than controlled burning that releases carbon dioxide into the air. The smoke from all these forest fires, that have destroyed healthy trees, has released a lot more carbon in the air than controlled burning would have. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is no fan or Trump, actually praised Trump’s efforts to help burning states fight these fires.

“There is not one phone call I have made to the President where he hasn’t quickly responded. In almost every instance, he’s responded favorably when it comes to addressing the emergency needs in this state,” Newsom said.

What many people don’t understand is that the federal government assisting when there is a large natural disaster started because of a disaster in Arkansas.

The Flood of 1927 hurt states long the Mississippi River. At the time, Arkansas was an agrarian state. This was particularly true along the Mississippi delta on Arkansas’ eastern side.

This flood hit Arkansas harder than any other state along that flooding river. Flood waters covered more than 6,600 square miles of the state. Thirty-six out of 75 counties were under water. In some places, the flood waters were 30 feet deep. Many places were underwater for more than 150 days.

There were 154 camps set up for refuges from the flood in Arkansas and more than 41,000 Arkansas families needed assistance just to stay alive.

Until that time, the federal government had never been involved in natural disaster assistance. President Calvin Coolidge did not want any federal dollars to go to flood victims in direct aid.

Coolidge did put his Secretary of Commerce – a fellow named Herbert Hoover -- in as the chairman of local and voluntary relief operations.

This was the first time there was any federal involvement in responding to a natural disaster.

Hoover swung into action, assembling hundreds of ships to carry supplies, overseeing the creation of tent cities for refugees, and making radio and newspaper appeals that helped raise millions of dollars for the Red Cross.

While it would be much later before the federal government started providing direct assistance for disaster victims, Hoover’s leadership on the recovery gave the federal government its first involvement in a natural disaster.

Hoover would go on to be elected President of the United States in 1928. He would be unfairly blamed for the Great Depression, which was not an American economic turmoil, but a world-wide economic disaster.

Today, when governors notify the President that a disaster is greater than the state has the resources to handle, the President declares a national disaster and brings the vast resources of the nation in to help.

The process of getting to this point all started in Arkansas in 1927.