California fires: When disaster fans flames of inequality

Planned power shut-offs may become California’s new normal. If so, that has vast implications for the world’s fifth-largest economy, including exacerbating inequality – even as those with resources work to help their neighbors.

California is under a state of emergency, ordering evacuations, battling fast-burning fires, and dealing with massive preemptive power outages. It is experienced with the evacuations and firefighting, which is complicated by seasonal high winds. The power outages, on the other hand, are something new here in the northern part of the state.

Around 2 million people lost...