The fires raging in Los Angeles are personal to me. As a native Angeleno and a fifth generation Californian, my heart breaks. Close friends and relatives have lost their homes and businesses, and many others have been evacuated. The toll of these fires is terrible: at least twenty-four have died in the fires, and Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna predicts the death toll is expected to rise as search crews and cadaver dogs comb through the rubble.
In the Eaton Fire in Pasadena and Altadena, whose residents I represented in the California State Assembly for many years, is where the large majority of deaths have occurred and over 7,000 homes and businesses have been destroyed. Reporters have focused on Malibu’s wealthy celebrities whose homes have been destroyed. However, the people of Pasadena and Altadena have suffered even more. The residents are average working-class people with modest homes. They live check to check, and they have few resources with which to rebuild. California’s leaders have failed these good people miserably.
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The highest priority for government is to keep the public safe. The current political leadership in California lost sight of that somehow. When deciding spending priorities, California’s politicians chose to cut back fire safety and prevention programs in order to fund their liberal, ideologically driven agendas. Those dreadful decisions left Angelenos unprotected against the raging fires. Don’t blame incompetence for this disaster. It is malfeasance pure and simple.
Here is an pared down list of the terrible policies that left Angelenos at the mercy of raging fires:
- To protect a small fish, the Delta Smelt, the state allows over two billion gallons a day to flow into the ocean rather than channeling runoff from the snow pack into basins and reservoirs. Because of a lack of water, fire hydrants ran dry, leaving firefighters unable to battle the flames. “There’s no water in the fire hydrants,” Rick Caruso, who owns the Palisades Village mall in the heart of the devastated area, fumed to local media. “The firefighters are there, and there’s nothing they can do — we’ve got neighborhoods burning, homes burning, and businesses burning. … It should never happen.”
- California has not built a new major water reservoir since 1979. Over ten years ago in 2014, Californians voted overwhelmingly for a $7.5 billion bond to construct new water reservoirs and dams. The deadline for completing the dams was three years ago on January 1, 2022. As of today, not a single reservoir has been built.
- In fact, Governor Newsom has added to the lack of water storage by ordering the demolition of several dams. Most recently in October four dams on the Klamath River were destroyed. Newsome’s twisted priorities were on display when he bragged, “By taking down these outdated dams, we are giving salmon and other species a chance to thrive once again, while also restoring an essential lifeline for tribal communities who have long depended on the health of the river.” He might just as well have said, “People in high fire danger areas be damned.”
- L.A. City and County do not enforce laws requiring homeowners to clear brush from around their homes. Dense overgrowth accumulated, providing plenty of fuel for the fires. Officials blame this non-enforcement on a lack of resources. However, Mayor Karen Bass cut the Fire Department’s budget by over $17 million, but she found money to fund $100,000 for a “Midnight Stroll Transgender Cafe,” $8,670 for the “One Institute the International Gay and Lesbian Archives,” and $170,000 for “Social Justice Art-Worker Investments.”
- The LA Fire Department’s strategic plan made “DEI” and a “progressive work environment” two of their top three priorities—regarding them as more important than “technological innovations” and “disaster recovery capabilities,” which it ranked last.
- Governor Newsom cut $101M from the Fire Prevention Budget despite severe overgrowth of dead trees and underbrush in State and National Forests, and controlled burns, which are the best way to remove the overgrowth, severely restricted due to the red tape involved in environmental review, which can take from three to seven years. As a result, Southern California was a tinderbox of fuel waiting to be ignited.
- Not to be outdone, the Biden administration last October ordered the U.S. Forest Service to stop prescribed burning in California.”
City, County, State, and Federal officials were alerted to problems getting water to firefighters just a month ago. In December, the Mountain Fire consumed over 20,000 acres and destroyed 243 structures, many of which were primary residences, and damaged another 127. This tragedy hit close to home – those displaced families lived on land that was part of the ranch where my great grandfather, Pierre Agoure, raised cattle and sheep.
Two water companies’ pumps stopped when they lost power because the power companies shut down power as a safety precaution. The pumps were out of action from 2 p.m. until 11p.m. when a generator was brought to the sites to restore operations. During those nine hours, the fire spread rapidly. The area served by these pumps included some of the worst-hit streets from the fire, where more than twenty homes were destroyed.
The Los Angeles Times reported that one of the companies “acknowledge(d) that it is best practice for water providers to top off their water tanks, stage backup generators and prepare crews for contingency work during a red flag event or possible fire weather.” Officials had a month before the current fires to preposition generators to keep the pumps running when power companies shut down power. Why didn’t they?
Now the butcher’s bill has come due for the spending on the pie-in-the sky projects of radical environmentalists and social justice warriors. We can see the terrible cost of those misplaced priorities – multiple deaths and thousands of people who have lost their home and all their possessions It’s time for the voters in California toss out the radical leftists whose policies allowed this fire to explode, and replace them with conservative leaders such as Ronald Reagan and George Deukmejian were to put common sense policies in place.
Pat Nolan was a member of the California State Assembly from 1978-1994 and was Republican Leader from 1984-1988.
Good article – except: the main reason for the freshwater outflows from the Delta to the sea is not the Delta smelt, which has been used as an excuse to argue for shuttling that water to the South. The most important reason is to combat and decrease the increasing salinity of the Delta water which is absolutely essential to our farmers’ crops, which would die with salt-water irrigation..
There are numerous other ways of providing more water to the South, particularly, building dams and reservoirs. Also according to Hetch Hetchy personnel, the four dams shut down on the Klamath river in the North were failing and too small to be worth the cost to rebuild. IMHO a principal reason why the fires are so hot and dangerous is the failure in forest maintenance practices, environmental policy forbidding even removal of dead trees for fear of “the evil of logging.”
Rather than “microscopically” looking at CO2 levels, why not highlight that 99.9% of Earth’s atmosphere is NOT CO2?
• 99.9% of Earth’s atmosphere is: Nitrogen 78%, Oxygen 21%, and Argon 0.9% for a total of 99.9% of the air we breathe.
• The remaining 1/10th of 1% is comprised of 10 trace gasses – Neon, Helium, Hydrogen, Methane, Ozone, Xenon, CO2, Krypton, Nitrous Oxide, & Water Vapor
• CO2 is an extremely beneficial gas that is critical for all life and healthy plant growth. The current levels of carbon dioxide are about 420 to 440 parts per million.
CO2 levels today of about 420 ppm are nearing the starvation levels for plant and human life on earth of about 150 ppm.
Good article, Pat. Someone once said “elections have consequences.” When voters elect politicians who put their ideology above public safety, the consequences are catastrophic. The government failures you cataloged are appalling.
I have lived in the rugged chaparral of Topanga Canyon for half-a-century. Here are a couple of observations:
1) In our area, at least, the LA county fire dept, inspects homes annually for brush clearance. In regard to the Palisades fire, one fire fighter was quoted as saying that even homes with proper bush clearance were lost because of wind-blown embers falling directly on structures and igniting them. With up to 100 mph wind gusts and extremely low humidity, there is little that can be done to save any building constructed with combustible materials.
2) Many articles have discussed the lack of preparation for wildfires, but few have addressed the actual causes of ignition. The causes in Southern California are almost always of human origin.
Arching electrical power lines have been a leading cause of a number destructive brush fires in the past. Remedial measures now include Public Safety Power Shutoffs, whereby utilities proactively de-energize high voltage lines during Red Flag wind events, with prior notification to customers. A longer term solution, being pursued in Topanga and elsewhere, is the undergrounding of high voltage lines.
A much more insidious cause is arson. In a county with a population of more than 10 million, even if only .01% are inclined toward such criminal acts, that number is in the thousands. I have personally fought two arsonist-started brush fires that threatened my home and my neighbors’ homes. In one case, I extinguished an obviously arsonist-stated fire using an old army trenching tool that my dad had given me. In Topanga, we have a volunteer organization called “Arson Watch” that attempts to patrol, monitor and prevent such criminal activity during Red Flag events, but it is an impossible task. It is an easy crime to get away with—few arsonists seem to be brought to justice. Sometimes, it is unintentional, as when the campfires of homeless persons get out of control
And how many of the failed political Left that help create conditions for this catastrophe will push for:
HIGH DENSITY RHNA HOUSING?
SECTION 8 HOUSING IN THE MIDDLE OF MILLION DOLLAR HOUSING?
EXTRA AUD HOUSING TO FEED THE NEXT FIRES?