“February was the wettest month in downtown Los Angeles since 1998. With over 12 inches of rain drenching the city, it was the fourth-wettest February–and the seventh-wettest month overall –in the city’s nearly 150-year recorded history,” said Judson Jones’ report on Los Angeles’ weather on March 2, 2024, in The New York Times. Just under a year later, Los Angeles is on fire and the fire hydrants have run dry from a lack of water.
“In 2014, in the middle of a severe drought that would test California’s complex water storage system like never before, voters told the state to borrow $7.5 billion and use part of it to build projects to stockpile more water. Seven years later, that drought has come and gone, replaced by an even hotter and drier one that is draining the state’s reservoirs at an alarming rate. But none of the more than half-dozen water storage projects scheduled to receive that money have been built,” reported Adam Beam of the Associated Press on Aug. 31, 2021. We are now a decade beyond that 2014 vote and the last reservoir built for Los Angeles was completed in 1979.
Los Angeles is a victim of progressive mismanagement–something that for far too long its wealth could cover up. But now, the fires do not care if you are Republican or Democrat, rich or poor, progressive or conservative–they burn, in some cases up to four football fields of land a minute. The reservoir sending water to the fire hydrants is dry. The mountain brush has been unpruned for some time due to environmental sensitivities and lack of manpower.
On Dec. 16, 2024, Robert Schmad reported at the Washington Examiner that the U.S. Forestry Service had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on diversity, equity, and inclusion workshops, all while failing to meet federal goals for forest management. The Associated Press reported back on June 27, 2023, that “federal land managers are scrambling to catch up after falling behind on several of their priority forests for thinning even as they exceeded goals elsewhere. And they have skipped over some highly at-risk communities to work in less threatened areas.” The AP continued, “Hindering the Forest Service nationwide is a shortage of workers to cut and remove trees on the scale demanded, government officials and forestry experts say.”
Los Angeles set itself up for failure. In addition to dry fire hydrants, Los Angeles has a shortage of firefighters. Like the federal government, the city prioritized DEI over core competencies. Comedian Adam Carolla testified some time ago before a legislative hearing that the Los Angeles Fire Department told him it would take seven years to become a firefighter because he was white. Seven years after signing up to take the written test, he stood in line to take the test with a young black lady behind him. He testified he asked the young lady when she had signed up. “Wednesday,” she replied.
It is not just that Los Angeles chose to elevate diversity concerns over fully staffing a fire department, but it also fired competent firefighters who would not take the COVID-19 vaccine. In 2022, Los Angeles officials made a very big deal of hiring the first female and first openly gay fire chief in county history. Last year, the Los Angeles County Commission cut the fire department budget by $17.6 million. But the fire department continued to spend over $1 million on a “racial equity plan” designed to “end systemic, institutional, and structural racism” within the fire department.
On top of all the disastrous policies and progressive failures in the run-up to today, California regulated fire insurance out of the state, prohibiting insurers from raising rates without state consent. The result has been a collapse in the ability to get fire insurance reasonably. California’s solution has been a state-funded insurance program that is costly and inefficient.
The state that has spent billions for a progressive high-speed rail idea has fired firefighters, failed to build new reservoirs, failed to cut back vegetation, and elevated diversity concerns over competence. Now, instead of appreciating progressivism is a recipe for disaster, they will blame global warming and, undoubtedly, Donald Trump.
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Erick Erickson is the editor of The Resurgent on X and is a Fox News contributor. He is host of “The Erick Erickson Show” and the former editor of RedState.
Reprinted with permission from The Daily Signal – By Erick Erickson
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Talk about a perfect storm, democrat leadership, draining water reserves, cutting fire departments, allowing insurance carriers to abandon their policy holders. Creating a whole new population of homeless and run away inflation to prevent recovery, then use red tape to prevent just that. Dems own this because they are in charge.
As we spend billions and billions of dollars going to Mars maybe we need to look at spending some money to figure out how to at least minimize the disastrous effects of our weather and wildfires. Maybe we could desalt ocean water and fill up those reservoirs and then keep this filled. Maybe there’s a way to redirect the Santa Ana winds. Maybe there’s a way to slow down a tornado. Maybe the space we need to explore is ours, our atmosphere, our oceans. Obviously, a lot of people involved in insurance saw a problem and stopped giving fire insurance. We didn’t miss the signs of danger, we ignored them. We’ve doing the same with drugs and gang violence. Through all of these disasters we have been given the opportunity to unify the nation and make America great again – the ball’s in our court…
Look at every blue led city in the nation since the 1960’s. The Left’s specialty is burning a city down.
Let’s not forget the lefts idea of funding is for payouts to their like minded cronies: A perfect example of their vending machine for justifying socialist sins of omission.
The accumulated debt and disasters of California is clear evidence that is directly connected the total failures of its one STATIST party rule.
Under American FEDERALISM, our States are the rightful owners of the results to what they do or do not do within their infrastructure.
This Californian Democrat collective is now on every cogent persons mind: Settling the argument why big government Statism always collapses upon itself.