Trump says California can learn from Finland on fires

Actually, Finns don’t rake leaves and needles

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly blamed California’s forest management for the huge wildfires burning there, one of which has left at least 76 dead and become the most destructive in state history.

Though experts called his criticism unjustified, last weekend he continued in that vein, suggesting that California should take lessons from Finland, a country with 23 million hectares of forests but far few forest fires.

“You look at other countries where they do it differently and it’s a whole different story,” Trump said at a news conference in Paradise, California. “I was with the president of Finland and he said: ‘We have a much different — we’re a forest nation.’ He called it a forest nation, and they spent a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things. And they don’t have any problem.” Trump added that when Finland does have forest fires, they are “a very small problem.” But as with his earlier comments about forest management in California, experts said the president’s remarks were misleading.

Raking for leaves and needles is not a normal feature of Finnish fire prevention, according to Rami Ruuska, a forest fires expert at the Finnish Interior Ministry. Instead, Finns focus on removing dead trees from the forest floor — where possible. “Of course, we have a big country and we can’t do it everywhere,” Ruuska said.

President Sauli Niinisto of Finland said, in an interview published Sunday in a Finnish newspaper, that in a brief conversation in Paris on November 11, he had explained the virtues of Finnish forest management to Trump. But he didn’t recall mentioning raking.