With respect to the Los Angeles wildfires, I’m not interested in blame. I’m interested in answers.
I want our government to learn what it needs to, because fires like this should never happen again.
But to get that kind of personal growth, our leaders need to be honest with themselves. This doesn’t mean listening to their biggest detractors. But they do need to ignore their own spin doctors. The truth lies somewhere in between.
I don’t know about you, but I have not seen many honest assessments so far. So let’s do it for them, so our leaders may learn from this tragedy.
First it’s necessary to dispense with the myths.
The fires were not caused exclusively by “climate change.” Our basin has had wildfires since before there were cars. And even if climate change exacerbated certain factors, it doesn’t excuse human error. Put simply, even if “climate change” is your excuse, it’s no license to fail to adequately perform what is in your control.
The fires were not exacerbated by a lack of water from Northern California due to protections for Delta Smelt. This affects the amount of water on a large scale that is available to Southern California any given year, but it doesn’t affect things like hydrant pressure in any neighborhood. If Trump wanted to attack California leaders, this was not the most effective sally.
Southern California wildfires weren’t technically caused by lack of “forest management.” While this might have been a factor in the Northern California fires of 2018, the neighborhoods affected here don’t have forests in the conventional sense. “Brush clearance” is a better term.
And though it’s a popular criticism, the fires weren’t exacerbated by Mayor Karen Bass going to Ghana. Perhaps she could have returned faster, and been more ready to address the media. But as ambassadors for their cities, mayors travel all the time. It was bad timing that she was out of town, but the trip was largely overhyped by Bass’s critics.
Other relevant factors fall somewhere between “valid” and “legendary.” There was a reservoir without water, and there were hydrants that ran out of water. But sometimes reservoirs will be offline for repairs. And hydrant pressure is largely a function of a system so old that its limitations are not any one person’s fault.
But now that we’ve dispensed the false narratives, let’s examine the facts, and then what could have been done better.
It is a fact that on January 3, the National Weather Service started warning everyone that Los Angeles would face “critical fire conditions” the following week. On January 6, the NWS was more passionate than I have ever seen from a usually staid government agency. “HEADS UP!!! A LIFE-THREATENING, DESTRUCTIVE, Widespread Windstorm is expected Tue afternoon.” Later on the 6th, it tried warning everyone again, again using uncharacteristically direct terms: “This is a Particularly Dangerous Situation – in other words, this is about as bad as it gets.”
I’m a father of three children, and I’m used to immature egos not always being able to make the leap into growth. So I often start with two gentle questions. Is there anything you could have done better? If someone else was in your position, what might they have handled differently?
I’d like to see our elected and appointed officials answer those questions. But because they likely won’t, I’ll take a stab at doing so for them.
The first three prompts have to do with the period between January 3 (when the warnings started) and January 7 (when the fire first broke out). In other words, about four days.
1. Given the National Weather Service’s warnings, which also specifically identified the Pacific Palisades area as being in the highest risk, should we maybe have dispatched crews to cut fire breaks on our hillsides?
2. Should we have pro-actively sprayed fire retardant in the most high-risk, high-vegetation areas?
3. It was troubling to see people abandoning cars in the middle of roads, halting evacuations and hurting firefighters’ ability to access burn areas. It was disturbing to see nurses running elderly patients across busy highways as they guessed how to evacuate. Should we have perhaps dispatched personnel to be ready to direct traffic along major evacuation routes?
The next three prompts cover the period immediately after the fires broke out. As with the prompts above, I hope they’re no-brainers. Let’s see if these cause any honest acknowledgements:
4. There’s a long list of actions that were taken too slowly. Could leaders perhaps have grasped the scope and magnitude of the problem quicker, and acted more decisively?
5. Does it help fire victims or politicians to hold hourlong press conferences where everyone strokes one another, when the people who need the information the most don’t have electrical power or internet access to watch them anyway? Could we perhaps switch from the performative to the informative?
6. It pained me to see friends, particularly in the Altadena area, go without potable water for so long. Tap water was unsafe; store shelves were bare. Could we have promptly activated volunteer groups to do things like deliver bottled water to those in need?
The final three prompts have to do with our general preparedness for the fires. These problems go back a few years, and again, I believe these questions are no brainers:
7. Many fire victims will have a hellish time dealing with their insurance (or lack thereof), and all Californians will have a hard time getting insurance in the future. Have we taken the honest, difficult, yet critically necessary steps to fix California’s insurance markets?
8. The pilots fighting these fires worked wonders and are genuine heroes. Should we perhaps have more firefighting aircraft on the ready in California, for times like this? Why are we always seeking help from other jurisdictions?
9. We saw a hobby drone take a super scooper aircraft out of commission, and it appears that some of the fires were caused by arsonists. In any event, the Los Angeles Fire Department says that between 54-80% of fires in Los Angeles are caused by homeless. Do our lenient laws contribute to fire risk? Should any of them change?
As these nine prompts show, we need not get into debates about Delta Smelt or climate change to conclude that we could have done better. If we answer the above questions honestly, we have to conclude that mistakes were made, often on matters that aren’t really up to debate.
Mistakes are all right if a politician is fumbling through a speech. Mistakes are tragic when it’s life and death. These fires were life and death. And they caused billions in property damage and will cause years of disruption.
They say that only with an acknowledgment do you know someone has learned a lesson. And only with an apology do you know they have remorse. I’d like to see both from our officials.
Mike Gatto previously served in the California Assembly. You can follow him on X @MikeGatto