Abject failures from Biden, Newsom, LAFD and others can no longer be ignored
Paul Driessen
Wildfires near Los Angeles have left Pacific Palisades looking like Dresden after the WWII fire-bombings. Over 12,000 homes, schools and businesses have been incinerated, dozens of people have died, at least 70,000 have been left homeless, and fires still rage.
AccuWeather estimates that just two of the fires will destroy $135-150 billion in property!
It’s a doubly horrific tragedy, because most of the death and devastation could have been prevented.
California has 33,000,000 acres of federal, state and private forestland – equivalent to Wisconsin. As the state’s population expanded, forests and wildlife increasingly merged with human habitats. And yet federal and state land managers – compelled by ideology, activists, legislators and judges – have steadfastly refused to permit timber cutting, tree thinning or brush removal, or take other actions that would reduce the likelihood of conflagrations.
So many trees are so jammed together now that they’re starved for space, water, nutrients and sunlight. Many are diseased. They are skinny matchsticks, primed to erupt in flames. Some 36,000,000 trees died just in 2022, across just 8% of these forestlands. But even dead and diseased trees are rarely removed.
Rainy fall and winter months stimulate tree, brush and grass growth. Parched summers dry everything out. Extended dry periods leave all this fuel ready to ignite for more months.
Lightning, sparks from cars or power lines, campfires and arsonists set areas aflame. Dry Santa Ana winds (40-70 mph, with gusts of 120-150 mph) whip fires into infernos. Depleted, defunded fire departments often arrive long after they could extinguish fires in their infancy.
The conflagrations generate still more powerful winds that carry embers, branches, even small trees thousands of feet – often into communities that are ill-prepared to cope.
This barely begins the litany of California government failures that help cause repeated fire calamities. However, state and local politicians adroitly avoid responsibility.
Their most common excuse is manmade climate change. They even have a new fear-inducing term: hydroclimate whiplash! Fossil-fuel-driven climate change supposedly brought two exceptionally wet winters, spurring unprecedented plant growth – and then caused unprecedented arid conditions and previously unheard-of Santa Ana winds that made these infernos unpredictable but inevitable.
Calling the massive, repeated government failures “incompetence” is too generous. Deliberate, callous, destructive malfeasance is more apt. Criminal may be appropriate.
Governor Gavin Newsom wants a special session to discuss spending $25-50 million to “Trump-proof” state policies. He wants to use a new $10-billion “climate bond” to reduce farm and ranch greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, improve “equitable access to nature,” build more parks in “disadvantaged communities,” upgrade ports to handle deepwater offshore wind projects, and more.
California is still pouring billions into EV subsidies, its “clean” energy transition, and the $100-billion “bullet train to nowhere.” It’s spending more billions supporting “sanctuary” status for illegal immigrants, maintaining gender and DEI programs, and ministering to America’s largest number of homeless people – which will now include 70,000+ who’ve lost everything to the 2025 wildfires.
One wonders whether they’ll treat these now-homeless taxpayers as well as they have illegal populations.
Legislated restrictions on how companies may conduct fire-risk assessments and what rates they can charge for homeowners insurance in high-fire-risk areas have caused insurers to leave the state or stop issuing new policies. Hundreds of thousands of families are now uninsured, underinsured or dependent on the state’s FAIR Plan, which has only $385 million in reserves.
Meanwhile, California devoted only $2.6 billion to “forest and wildfire resilience” across all state-managed forestlands, including Topanga State Park, where the fires started, right next to what once was Pacific Palisades – versus $14.7 billion for EVs and “clean renewable energy.”
With memories of the horrific 2018 Paradise (Camp) fire still causing nightmares, Mayor Karen Bass cut $17.6 million from the Los Angeles Fire Department budget, fired 100 firefighters who didn’t get Covid vaccines, and was partying at an embassy reception in Ghana as the fires erupted
LA Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley (salary: $654,000) has spent millions on DEI programs and hiring more women, gays and minorities. Deputy/Diversity Chief Kristine Larson (salary: $307,000) says victims want to see emergency responders that “look like” them, and if she isn’t strong enough to carry your husband out of a fire, he “got himself in the wrong place.”
They then failed to keep extra firefighters and firetrucks on duty as winds picked up just before the first forest fires were spotted – apparently to avoid paying overtime. That meant the LAFD couldn’t get there before fires roared out of control.
Exhausted firefighters trying to save multi-million-dollar homes in Palisades ran out of water. A major reason was that LA Water and Power Department CEO Janisse Quiñones (salary: $750,000) had the 117-million-gallon Santa Ynez Reservoir drained to repair cracks in its base. A full reservoir would have replenished huge storage tanks that feed and pressurize local fire hydrants.
Quiñones has said her “number one” priority is equity and social justice. Does that explain why the reservoir was drained in February 2024; no contractor was hired until November 2024; and even then no workers, equipment or materials were in place for 24/7 repairs?
Just as callously incompetent, why was there no plan (or no action taken) to utilize fireboats, tugboats, barges and other vessels from Long Beach Harbor and the San Diego Navy Base? Many are equipped with water storage, pumps, hoses and nozzles. They could spray seawater directly on coastal homes or run hoses ashore to connect to fire hydrant systems.
Some salt would remain in soils and kill some plants. However, the choice should be easy. Lose some prized vegetation to lingering salts – or have prized vegetation, homes, priceless heirlooms and artworks, and everything else incinerated by raging infernos. Homeowners never got to make that choice.
The incineration of these forests and communities released far more greenhouse gases than all the state’s now-shuttered coal- and gas-fired power plants would have over many decades.
Further complicating matters, the fires sent ash and pollutants into skies and left toxic chemicals behind – from plastics, paints, batteries, solvents and other materials in homes, buildings and vehicles. They’ve contaminated waters and soils, which could result in long cleanup and rebuilding delays.
Governor Newsom says he wants to expedite rebuilding. But LA health officials say debris removal and reconstruction are prohibited until licensed officials have carefully examined sites for toxics – dangerous or barely detectable levels? New building codes for fire resistance? Or homeowner demands for them?
Citizens need to discuss all this at town hall meetings, before the next conflagration strikes – inevitably, if proper forest and water management and personnel hiring are not implemented immediately. Put simply, the woke idiots responsible for this rampant destruction and loss of life must be replaced with people who understand their Number One Job is protecting citizens from crime, fires and other natural disasters.
Mr. Newsom also wants an investigation into the loss of fire hydrant water pressure. Californians have good reason to suspect he’s merely trying to find excuses and scapegoats, so that he and his favorite legislators can save their political hides.
Golden Staters need to revamp their political, bureaucratic, policy and woke systems. They need to rely less on government – and more on themselves, the way the Getty Villa and several neighbors did in Malibu, thereby saving homes, treasures and lives. Otherwise, these needless tragedies will be repeated.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environment, climate and human rights issues.
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There was an article in Quilette a few days ago on Western Australia’s wildlands management program, which was mostly successful, despite having even more flammable foliage than chaparral, eucalyptus.
But the greens are opposed to any wildlands management, as Nature Knows Best, and people should not be living adjacent to chaparral anyway.
Who cares that Native Americans had been using controlled burns since the end of the last Ice Age. The greens sense of Nature is apparently drawn from 1950’s Disney movies or Bambi, with an element of Smokey Bear.
I think “intentional” is a better word than “controlled” when it comes to what the Indians did. Modern fire agencies lose control of their controlled burns on a regular basis.
I do believe the real issue is not doing burns often enough. The permitting process has perverse outcomes due to the time involved.
SoCal permitting for undergrowth/brush clearance can be up to 5 years. Controlled burns, 7 years.
The other consideration is density. The negatives are many fold. Houses cheek by jowl have no defensible space and limited response access. Los Angeles is infamous for allowing overbuilding served by infrastructure designed for fewer of everything; people, traffic, water, sewer, electricity, fire response. Density also creates choke points for too many people going out and response teams going in.
Yes, the perverse permitting processes of California will delay and de-optimize rebuilding (actually replacement) outcomes. Urban planners will put a heavy thumb on the scales. The problem is urban plans are being imposed on exurban areas.
I have no doubt what eventually rises will be far denser and far more extensive and far more expensive when it is the exact opposite of what is appropriate.
Great observations, Giving_Cat.
Yes. I don’t see how Indians had any way to control a burn.
Bambi(1942) – The Forest Fire YouTube
The climate whiplash excuse exercised by the LA and California Artful Dodgers is a new and extraordinarily incompetent excuse. Fires are spread first by brush and then later, if the brush fire is strong enough, to the treetops. The brush in California forests is 1 to 10 hour brush meaning that within 10 hours of the last rain, they can, and do combust. It seems unlikely that “climate change” has any measurable or even detectable affect on this 1-10 hour window. Brush in LA area forests is so thick that they spread fire to the treetops almost immediately. When the fire reaches stick built homes with flammable siding and roofing, it’s as though the trees were lying on their side – even quicker to burn – one after another until the houses are gone. Failure to maintain safe forests and failure to have adequate fire resistant building codes are among the technical reasons for the fires. Incompetent governance overlays all.
California codes have improved over the years. I bought a new home in 1990 in Orange County, next to a wilderness area. We had fires behind our house, and firemen used to stage in our back yard. They told us that because there was no wood on the outside (frame only, stucco out walls, light concrete tiles that looked like wood shingles). But the watered down the slope behind us just to protect it. The other side of the canyon burned so heavily that we could barely touch the glass on the second floor – but no damage ever occurred.
It is rough to apply new codes to old buildings. It is expensive, and while I could easily expect that of the idiot pols in California, it would be extraordinarily unpopular to force millions out of their homes if they didn’t upgrade. Of course, state assistance to those who live on the edge of wooded areas would probably be sufficient – and even appreciated.
Politics in CA were so bad I could hardly wait to retire and move out. For a while, CA pols considered a law requiring former CA citizens pay income tax on their IRAs when they left the state. NV even passed a law saying no resident had to pay taxes to another state on IRA income. So I moved there.
RE: Paradise Fire 2018
I used Google Earth to have a look. The current image shows a lot of rusty-red color. Historic images show a forest. Close looks show a few houses, but empty blocks are all around. This is now 6 years hence, and recovery ain’t happening.
My guess: Much of the area now burning will not recover for a generation – 25 to 50 years. Maybe it should be abandoned because it will be nearly impossible to rebuild and then protect it from future storms and fire.
Interesting to me is that the Google Earth view of Paradise shows lots of large trees growing. It was the houses that burned, not so much the trees in the town.
Good point. Such environments will have vegetation that is fire-adapted, say with thick bark that is cork-like. It is fire-resistant.
A house at 1072 Maple Park Drive {Street View} looks new — with a Hardie® Plank and stone siding. I’ve got the same and the same blue and sandstone look. Their landscape is being installed as rock and gravel.
It is instructive to do a virtual tour of the town.
Would the enviros be OK with a Government program to spray all the trees with asbestos?
For reference John, the 2009 “Black Saturday” bushfires in Victoria, Australia (173 lives lost) were originally expected to prevent re-growth of eucalypts and acacia species for at least 15 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Saturday_bushfires
One year later, green sprouts from the scorched earth.
5 years later, hard to see the scorched earth through the saplings and underbrush.
If history repeats (as it has for millenia), in 30 years ther will b another “Black Saturday” bushfire.
It is not impossible. The government won’t let them.
Story Tip..
I find this quite humorous.
Oops: Climate Rescuer Hydrogen 12 Times Worse For The Climate, Researchers Find
Very nice Paul, California government sucks.
Under California law, the valuation of a home, for property tax purposes, is frozen until the home is sold.
There is one exception to this law. If a home is destroyed and not rebuilt for two years.
By dragging their feet on allowing rebuilding to start, the state greatly increases the chances that the new homes, when they are finally rebuilt, will be taxed at a much higher level than they were before the fires.
Even Bill Maher is DONE with Gavin Newsom!!!!!
Hey, you follow Liberal Hivemind too? I really like his videos.
Blaming Climate Change for inadequate preparation and response for forest fires, floods, and droughts is very standard political fare.
You forgot big waves. Big waves are now bigger due to climate change. It was the first thing out of the mouths of the Santa Cruz Mayor and City Manager after the end of it’s wharf was destroyed.
Of course, they all shut up after the Wharf Maintenance Supervisor revealed that it was the Coastal Commission protecting nesting seagulls that stopped wharf repair permits for over a year before the storms.
There seem to be a lot of Lawyers/Law/Political studies in the USA. It would be interesting to compare the numbers to those studying science, defined as follows:
noun
the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation, experimentation, and the testing of theories against the evidence obtained.
“the world of science and technology”
I shudder at the term “Political Science” – it has nothing to do with the physical and natural world. Do graduates claim the right to be scientists?
“most of the death and devastation could have been prevented.”
TOTAL BS
How so?
We know it’s true when he capitalizes it.
All those beautiful palm trees act like Roman candles when they burn. The fronds are uncoupled from the trees and go flying.
This morning’s WSJ: “How L.A. Bureaucracy Made It Harder to Clear Flammable Brush
A mishmash of government agencies failed to keep public lands safe from deadly wildfires, residents say”