The Los Angeles wildfires were still raging uncontained when the finger-pointing started. The devastation was caused, not by prolonged drought or the Santa Ana winds, according to President-elect Donald Trump and others, but by Democrat politicians whose priorities allowed the fires to spread.
Responding to Trump’s accusation, California Gov. Gavin Newsom told CNN’s Anderson Cooper: “People are literally fleeing, people have lost their lives, kids have lost their schools, families completely torn asunder, churches burned down. And this guy wanted to politicize it. I have a lot of things I want to say, but I won’t.”
But it wasn’t just Trump. Questions were flying from Los Angeles residents, including Hollywood celebrities whose homes were destroyed, about water availability and evacuation routes and why authorities weren’t better prepared for danger that the National Weather Service had warned about the week prior. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass wasn’t even in the country when the fires broke out — she was in Ghana.
And pundits quickly discovered that the official bio of the Los Angeles fire chief, Kristin Crowley, says her priorities are “creating, supporting, and promoting a culture that values diversity, inclusion, and equity while striving to meet and exceed the expectations of the communities.”
Blame is also being assigned to Democrats generally, with some predicting that Newsom’s national political prospects are going up in smoke as memes circulate of him with Los Angeles burning in the background.
Speaking to Laura Ingraham on Fox, actor James Woods, who lost his home to the Palisade fire, called Newsom a “blithering idiot,” and said that if his fire-management policies were responsible, “this isn’t a wake-up call; this is the kind of thing they have tribunals for.” Speaking of the LA fire chief, Woods said, “This isn’t a social justice exercise that you’re in charge of; this is getting water to areas that need water because there are fires and 100-mile-an-hour winds burning houses to the ground.”
And podcaster and comedian Adam Carolla, who had to evacuate and doesn’t know if his home is still standing, appeared on both Fox News and the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton radio show to talk about “bad governance” leading to the devastation. Carolla noted that Malibu had a major fire just last month and said that officials are failing to take steps that would mitigate them. For example, money being spent on high-speed rail should instead be used to upgrade “decrepit” power lines that can spark fires,” he said. “They want to blame everything on climate change, but it’s really inaction.”
And responding to a viral video showing the Los Angeles mayor staying silent when asked about the fires and her responsibility, Carolla told Sean Hannity that Democrat officials in California “aren’t used to being asked difficult questions ... they don’t even know how to react when a tough question is asked.”
It’s hard to see how Bass’s political career will survive the renewed scrutiny headed her way. She was already controversial, thanks in part to her past admiration of Fidel Castro, which she had to walk back when she was briefly considered as Joe Biden’s running mate in 2020. When the fires broke out, she was in Ghana as part of the delegation representing the U.S. at the inauguration of Ghana’s new president; by the time she returned home, more than 1,000 homes or structures had already been destroyed.
The National Weather Service had warned of “extreme fire weather conditions” days before the first blaze broke out and one evacuee told The New York Times that the catastrophe is the result of “an utter breakdown in leadership, and it starts with the mayor’s office.”
In a news conference Wednesday, Bass blamed the fires on the drought and winds, and said, “We have to resist any, any effort to pull us apart.”
She’s right — but so are her critics. What’s unfolding in LA is both a natural disaster and a “man-made catastrophe,” as The Free Press put it.
The devastation is, in part, the result of a drought that had turned vegetation into kindling, and the Santa Ana winds, which threw embers that ignited new fires and which inhibited firefighting efforts. The devastation is surely also a failure of foresight and leadership, made evident by reports of water tanks and fire hydrants running dry.
According to NBC News, “Experts in urban water management said it’s unlikely that poor planning or negligence were to blame for the water tanks’ drying up. Rather, ‘these systems are not designed to deal with these disasters at the magnitude and scale and the frequency that’s happening,’ said Newsha Ajami, chief development officer for research at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.”
But that’s exactly the point. It’s clear that these systems need to be better designed, and also that, when faced with budget constraints, cutting from the fire department’s budget might not be wise in a time of heightened risk. According to NBC Los Angeles, the fire chief warned the mayor in a memo last month that the budget cuts “severely limited the department’s capacity to prepare for, train for, and respond to large-scale emergencies, including wildfires.”
Authorities don’t know how the LA wildfires began, and there will doubtless be years of inquiries about how — or if — the widespread destruction could have been prevented.
Accountability is needed. But for now, it’s about coming together to serve those who need help.