Monday, January 13, 2025
-Bill Crane
In January of 2018, I followed our Georgia Bulldogs to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, CA. The game was incredible, the Dawgs won, and I would not return to California until the post-pandemic win of the National Championship game in January of 2023 at the new SoFi Stadium complex near LAX. In 2018, I arrived early, visited some friends, and spent an extra day on either side of the game day traveling southern California.
California in 2018 had been through several years of severe drought, worsening their challenges with ongoing and multi-thousand-acre wildfires. As I drove and rode the trains and light rail around the city and region, small to medium sized brush fires dotted the urban landscape and a thick haze of smoke obscured views of the LA skyline. By 2020, the Covid 19 pandemic would bring less traffic, cleaner air and a bounty of federal largess. During at least one of those pandemic years, California Governor Gavin Newsome bragged about the state’s $33-BILLION budget surplus.
As many other cities, counties, states and school boards used those Covid dollars towards one-time civic projects, California might have considered addressing its growing challenge with increasingly dangerous urban, suburban and rural forest fires…now burning hundreds of thousands of acres, with each major outbreak. But that did not happen.
Two years of solid rainfall also blessed the state, including a near torrential rain shower that flooded the area around LAX and SoFi stadium during my more recent visit for the 2023 College Football Championship game. We were looking for an Ark outside the stadium that night…
However instead of dealing with forestry and water resource needs, out of concern for the endangered species status of an increasingly rare salamander, millions of gallons of fresh rainwater and later snow melt coming into California reservoirs was instead re-directed into the Pacific Ocean. You heard that correctly, a routinely parched and drought frequent state, with annual challenges of forest fires and increasingly high and frequent Santa Ana winds, dumped the equivalent of a few billion gallons of freshwater into non potable and untreated salt water, the Pacific Ocean.
Multiple bills were introduced in the California legislature, to allow counties more flexibility and some resources to conduct better forest management, to include periodic controlled burnings, as well as to simply clear out dead trees, debris and dry kindling on the forest floor, which again FEED forest fires. The few bills which made it to the Governor’s desk in the progressive haven were vetoed.
In the now destroyed community of Pacific Palisades, a more than 117-million-gallon reservoir was emptied and not refilled for a period of nearly two years. While the burning Palisades nearby looked like Dante’s Inferno from the air. In addition to weathering $17-million in L.A. budget cuts, the LA County Fire Department had more than 100-pieces of firefighting trucks and equipment sidelined awaiting repair and maintenance, unable to be dispatched all over the county, including to the Pacific Palisades, Altadena and Pasadena, where firefighter often hooked up to hydrants finding water pressure near non-existent, with the hydrants instead releasing gasps of air or perhaps a trickle of water.
Fire Departments are NOT in charge of water service or supply delivery. The weather forecast and droughts have been underway for more than a year. Major global insurers began non-renewal of homeowner coverage several months ago. The insurers can at least read weather forecasts.
President Joe Biden already promised full funding assistance for the displaced in California for 6-months. Current FEMA household aid per residence is capped at $44,000, without additional Congressional action. That offer is also substantially higher and different than received by the more than 160,000 who lost their homes and businesses across western North Carolina during the havoc wreaked by Hurricane Helene.
The death toll from these fires is currently at 16, with 153,000 L.A. county residents under evacuation orders. Another 57,000 homes and business structures remain at significant risk of destruction by these multiple fires. I expect California’s fleeing and declining population will swell. Governor Gavin Newsome, like California Democratic Governor Gray Davis before him, may face a recall. Newsome, along with L.A. Mayor Karen Bass should both seriously consider resigning their offices. Disasters happen, and not just in blockbuster movies. L.A. is again poised to host an Olympic Games. The Hollywood sign thankfully is made of steel and though singed, it survived, but California is also overdue for its next big earthquake. From what we have just seen with these fires, the state and L.A. are NOT anywhere close to being ready.
