Driving towards Pacific Palisades, the heart of the LA wildfires, I see ash falling like snow. The air is filled with a strong sulphurous smell that makes my throat burn. In the distance, the sky glows a menacing red and on the opposite side of the road, there is a long line of traffic as everyone else is also trying to evacuate.
An American friend with me struggles to take it all in. ‘This is f***ing unbelievable, man,’ he repeats softly to himself.
Even by LA standards these fires are unprecedented. They are the worst not only in the history of California but the history of the United States.
The devastating wildfires have already claimed the lives of at least 11 people, destroyed an estimated 29,000 acres of land, including 10,000 homes and other structures. The economic damage is staggering, amounting to around £47 billion ($57 billion), and forcing 180,000 people to flee their homes.
The atmosphere here is a mix of anger and sorrow, reminiscent of the aftermath of tragic events like a Russian missile strike in Ukraine or a bloody battle. Almost everyone here believes that this level of destruction could have been prevented.
The main target of their anger is LA mayor Karen Bass, who was away in Ghana when the fires began. When she did eventually show up to give a press conference, she informed her now desperate citizenry that all the help they needed could be ‘found at URL’.
She had meant to give the emergency website for victims of the fire to visit, but it appears the script in front of her only said ‘URL’ – the shorthand for all web addresses. Thinking on your feet is not a Bass speciality.
Ms Bass is utterly out of her depth. Everyone already knew that her last budget included £14.4 million ($17.6 million) of cuts to the fire department. Now a leaked memo has revealed that just days before the fire, the city also asked the fire department to make an extra £40 million ($49 million) of budget cuts.
In a city where fires are a part of life, this is unforgivable. And it’s merely one problem of many.
Another major factor is the dried-out underbrush and unmanaged forests that, under the right conditions, become flammable with almost a single spark.
In LA, brush and forestry needs to be regularly cleared. It wasn’t. Why? Well, according to Edward Ring, co-founder of the California Policy Centre, a conservative think tank, environmentalist lawsuits have consistently blocked the necessary logging, grazing and thinning of forests. This allowed California’s forest density to increase to about five times what it had been for the past 20 million years and turned them into tinderboxes.
Then there are the water issues. Hydrants in Pacific Palisades had little to no water running out of them as the fires began.
By 3am on Wednesday, Janisse Quinones, the chief executive and chief engineer of the LA Department of Water and Power, confirmed all three water storage tanks in the area – each holding about 1 million gallons – had run dry.
Fire hydrants are a feature of the Palisades. They sit on many corners, small and either yellow or red – yet now when I look at them on the streets here they seem a mocking reminder of everything that has gone wrong.
Many of the hydrants I saw had not even been uncapped. The fire brigade had never even attempted to use them.
What makes all this so lamentable is that these problems were all made plain just two months ago. In November, firefighters battling a large blaze in the Santa Susana mountains, some 15 miles north of Palisades, similarly reported issues of low water pressure and outright unavailability.
Ventura County Fire chief Dustin Gardner later said at a community meeting: ‘Did water run out? Yes… when those hydrants – on the west side or in the Estates – wherever they went dry, firefighters adjust to that… we’re used to that.
‘This latest response has been a disaster, and the authorities know it.’
‘The chronic under-investment in the city of Los Angeles in our public infrastructure and our public safety partners was evident and on full display over the last 24 hours,’ said LA City Council member Traci Park.
The authorities have been found wanting, the buck must stop with someone, and ultimately that someone is California governor Gavin Newsom. Hoping to douse the criticism coming his way, he has announced an investigation into why the hydrants were short of water. But a big part of any inquiry will undoubtedly be his role in the management of California’s water resources and forests.
On his first day in office in January 2019, Mr Newsom pledged ‘to do more and better’ on wildfires.
But an investigation by news outlet NPR found that despite his claims that 90,000 acres would be managed responsibly, in reality it was less than 12,000 acres.
It also found that Mr Newsom deducted £123 million ($150 million) from California’s wildfire prevention budget.
The political firestorm facing the Democrat is made worse because Donald Trump is now on his case.
Calling him Governor Gavin ‘Newscum’, the President Elect accused him of refusing to ‘sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way’.
The reason that Mr Newsom apparently refused is that diverting the water would have endangered delta smelt fish.
This three-inch silvery blue fish is native only to the delta region of the San Joaquin river. The problem is that the delta – a vast network of lakes and tributaries, which lies to the west of San Francisco, and is fed by that snow melt from mountains in California’s north east – is a major water source for Los Angeles further south.
The delta smelt fish’s numbers have drastically declined since the 1970s, as mechanical pumps extract fresh water from the delta, leaving the fish vulnerable to higher levels of salt water.
Conservationists argue that the delta smelt is the thin end of the wedge, for the increasing salinity of the water will eventually endanger the Chinook salmon and resident killer whales.
Farmers, though, have long complained that their crops will suffer by restricting fresh water use. And now it seems the issue could badly damage Newsom politically.
For his part, Mr Newsom has denied that such a ‘declaration’ as Mr Trump described existed, saying: ‘There is no such document as the water restoration declaration – that is pure fiction.’
His attempts to portray himself as LA’s saviour are not going well. In a video that has gone viral, a mother whose daughter’s school burned down ran up to Mr Newsom and asked what he was doing to solve the crisis.
His grandiose reply that ‘I am literally talking to the President right now’ came unstuck when the woman asked to listen to the call, forcing him to admit that he wasn’t actually speaking to Joe Biden. ‘I’ve tried five times to get through’, he mumbled weakly. ‘Why is the President not taking your calls?’ she demanded.
She, like so many others here, has suffered a lot. A friend of my brother Phillip has been luckier. His house has been spared. The only problem is that almost everything around it is destroyed, including the school his children attend.
‘I can’t go back and live there with nothing around me,’ he says.
‘People don’t realise the worst thing is not the destruction of buildings, but the destruction of communities.’
The systemic dysfunction is so bad that people are looking for an explanation for what went wrong, and it seems that many have found one in a simple acronym: DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion).
Critics now accuse LAFD chief Kristin Crowley of prioritising DEI policies over actual fire fighting since taking the job in 2022.
The LAFD’s 2023-2026 strategic plan lists seven goals. While the first is to ‘deliver exceptional public safety and emergency services’, the following six include commitments to ‘embrace diversity, equity and inclusion’, ‘promote a safe, healthy and progressive work environment’ and ‘enhance… environmental sustainability’.
It’s too early to say how large a role this focus on woke idiocy played, especially given the manifold other failings.
What matters is that people believe it. Unsurprisingly, Elon Musk has waded in, tweeting simply: ‘DEI means people DIE.’
Right-wing podcaster Charlie Kirk was also keen to get involved. ‘Meet the people in charge of LA’s fire response,’ he tweeted.
‘All of them lesbians named Kristin. Kristina Crowley – First LGBTQ Fire Chief LAFD. Salary: $439,722. Kristina Kepner – First Lesbian Assistant Chief LAFD.
Salary: $264,468. Kristine Larson – First black lesbian Equity Bureau Chief LAFD. Salary: $399,000.’
As of yesterday afternoon, the tweet had 37,000 retweets and 137,000 likes. The public discourse in Los Angeles is becoming as poisonous as the air. As we finally drive out of the Palisades my friend looks around once more.
‘When they catch the arsonist scum who did this,’ he growls, ‘the families of those who died or those who lost everything should decide their punishment.’
The rage is palpable and Mr Newsom, Ms Bass and others will do well to survive the inquisition.
