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 $17.6 million (£14.4 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 $49 million (£40 million) of budget cuts.
Whoops! Oh, well, I'm in no doubt that once they return to rebuild, most of LA will still vote Democrat. Some people just don't learn.
And of course, they won't even question why some come to pour fuel on their flames.
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.
And this accusation appears to be gathering pace like the wildfires that are still raging out of control.
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.
I wonder if there's a clause in her contract that says 'No water? No pay!' - it'd be nice to think so, wouldn't it. And this isn't something that wasn't foreseen.
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.'
The things firefighters are 'used to' seem a little...changed...from what we all fondly imagine they would be, Dustin.
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.
The mismanagement of the water allegedly being to protect a species of fish. Gavin is hopefully about to find out that fish don't vote.
The political firestorm facing the Democrat is made worse because Donald Trump is now on his case.
Good.
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.
Just like UK politicians, the first response is to lie, comfortable in the fact that they are rarely challenged on it by the sycophants in the media.
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