A blaze that consumed 400 acres and damaged or destroyed nearly 20 homes in the Bel Air region of Los Angeles has been blamed on a cooking fire at a homeless encampment as issues related to vagrancy across California reach a crisis.

Images and videos of the ‘Skirball Fire’ went viral across the world as apocalyptic scenes from one of the most exclusive communities in the United States left viewers in shock.

Now that the fire is nearing complete containment, Los Angeles officials revealed that the conflagration has been traced to an abandoned campsite where investigators found remnants of a portable cooking stove and fuel canisters. They also deduced that the space had served as home base to an unknown quantity of transients for years.

“The camp — one of scores of makeshift communities that have grown along freeways, rivers and open space across Los Angeles — was largely destroyed in the fire, leaving authorities with little evidence,” reports the Los Angeles Times. “Debate about camps and the fire danger come as Los Angeles is struggling with a rise in the homeless population.”

“An annual count in May found that the homeless population of Los Angeles County had soared 23% to nearly 58,000 people in the last year. The homeless population in the West L.A. service area — including Bel-Air and Brentwood — rose 18% from 4,659 to 5,511 in the same time period, the count found.”

Infowars has reported at length about the explosion of tent cities in California – even capturing the attention of local corporate media – including one migrant encampment sprawling through the governmental nucleus of Orange County at the Santa Ana Civic Center, where drug addicts and illegal aliens reside under the watchful eye of law enforcement.

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California is struggling through one of the worst years for fires in the state’s history, but while Governor Jerry Brown and his fellow travelers are quick to blame ‘global warming’ and the Trump administration, it is clear that there are many factors in play for which state lawmakers and policies are responsible.

In October, after massive blazes ripped through central and northern regions of California, a twice-deported illegal alien was arrested and charged with felony arson for his role in setting a fire that affected Sonoma County.

The illegal alien population in California is by far the largest of any state in the U.S., and the hard-left political machine seems intent on exploiting that issue to its extremes with the passage of legislation that will establish California as a ‘sanctuary state’ effective January, 2018.

Overcrowding, strain on resources, crime, and deteriorating infrastructure will only serve to exacerbate seasonal fire issues that have been standard in the dry, desert state for a long time.

Joseph Farah, editor-in-chief of WND.com and a former resident of the Sunshine State, has identified a host of underlying causes for region’s proclivity towards combustion in his piece, “9 Real Reasons California Burns.”

“California has been a desert for thousands of years. It’s not because of man-made activity, increases in carbon dioxide or catastrophic climate change,” Farah writes. “There’s not enough rainfall in California to support its heavy population – especially without dams and reservoirs that politicians are reluctant to build.”

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