‘Competence Matters’: Catastrophic California Conflagrations Continue
As deadly wildfires rage on around Los Angeles, more revelations have come to light revealing the “domino effect of missteps” by state and local officials. According to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection on Wednesday morning, the Palisades Fire was 19% contained and the Eaton Fire 45% contained, while a Red Flag Warning remained in effect into Thursday. Meanwhile, revelations of the incompetent decision-making that preceded the fires likewise continued unchecked.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Mayor Karen Bass (D) was “posing for photos at an embassy cocktail party in Ghana” as the first fire exploded. The Palisades fire broke out on January 7 at 10:30 a.m., and by 11:22 a.m. city officials warned that it was “already exceeding 10 acres.” But Bass either wasn’t informed by her staff or couldn’t be bothered to leave the party until sometime between noon and 12:30 p.m., Los Angeles time.
Bass, who pledged to “not travel internationally” during her mayoral campaign, departed Los Angeles to attend the inauguration of Ghana’s new president, John Dramani Mahama, on January 4, two days after the National Weather Service had warned of “extreme fire weather conditions” in Los Angeles.
A reporter asked Bass on Tuesday, “Looking back, would you have taken that trip overseas?” Bass replied, “You know, I am going to focus today … on what we know. Thank you.” Then she walked away as reporters shouted questions.
The L.A. Times also discovered that Los Angeles fire officials responded to the Palisades Fire without urgency. At first, they sent only five out of 40 available fire engines, while holding back 1,000 firefighters until the fire was already out of control. “You give yourself the best chance to minimize how big the fire could get. … If you do that, you have the ability to say, ‘I threw everything at it at the outset,’” declared former L.A. Fire Department Battalion Chief Rick Crawford. “That didn’t happen here,” adding to a “domino effect of missteps.”
The reasoning behind this lackadaisical response is thus far unclear. Was it because the L.A. Fire Department’s first lesbian-identifying fire chief is too busy prioritizing DEI, or because Mayor Bass cut $17.6 million from the department’s budget? In any event, a stitch in time would have saved nine. California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) has now activated approximately 2,500 members of the National Guard to support the overworked firefighters.
Speaking of Newsom, his hands are not entirely free of accelerant either. The current state budget, which he signed, cut about $105 million in fire-prevention programs, including forest management, wildfire resilience, and research programs.
In a move likely calculated to direct public attention elsewhere, Newsom announced a state investigation into the L.A. Department of Water and Power’s response to the wildfire, particularly the reports of empty fire hydrants in Pacific Palisades and the empty Santa Ynez Reservoir.
(The fire hydrants were likely emptied from overuse because they were never designed to fight a wildfire, but the empty reservoir is more troublesome. It has been dry since February 2024 due to a tear in its cover, which is designed to keep the water free from contaminants — not exactly a top concern amidst a raging wildfire. Regulatory filings show that the cover was previously repaired in 2022; it had an expected 20-year lifespan when installed in 2011.)
“I don’t think Newsom’s so-called investigation is going to reveal much. If anything, it will probably just kind of disappear,” Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.) said skeptically on “Washington Watch” Tuesday. “This is what he likes to do when he gets in trouble, is announce some sort of investigation to try to blame other people.” With a disaster of this magnitude, however, there is surely plenty of blame to go around, and Newsom will likely not escape scot-free.
“What we need is actually a federal investigation and oversight into the absolute political failures and failures of competence that — at the very least — contributed to the scale of this disaster,” Kiley declared. “It’s going to be important that we … use the levers that we have at the federal level to have aggressive oversight going forward, to make sure that this sort of thing never happens again.”
In fact, a renewed focus on competence seems to be the silver lining materializing out of this disaster. This week, Los Angeles Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong admitted it was “a mistake” to endorse Bass for mayor over a more moderate Democrat, Rick Caruso.
“Maybe the lesson we learned out of this catastrophe in California is to now vote not based on left or right or D versus R but perhaps based on competent or no experience in operating a job!!” reflected Soon-Shiong. “We have to elect based on competence … yes competence matters.”
Whenever public officials are chosen based upon immutable characteristics of their identity or for their ability to fulfill certain woke quotas, they are not being chosen based upon their competence.
“Everything’s fine as long as ‘everything’s fine,’” quipped Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. “But, as soon as there’s a problem, we realize that they haven’t been focused on doing what you hired them to do and what they’re supposed to do with the money of the citizens.”
Californians pay high taxes, “yet we have fire hydrants that don’t have water coming out of them. We have police departments, fire departments that were not adequately staffed. We have empty reservoirs. We have forests that are completely overgrown, tinderboxes. … And so, people do ask what is happening to all that money,” explained Kiley. “What you see emerging in California is this movement of citizens who are demanding change and common sense in our government. And I like to call it ‘back-to-basics’ — you know, build our roads, store our water, manage our forests, maintain our grid, fund our police and fire, do the things government is supposed to do.”
“Instead,” Kiley concluded, “we have a government that’s doing a whole lot of other things that it shouldn’t be doing but is utterly failing at the basics.” On Monday, President Biden announced a pittance of relief for victims of the L.A. wildfires, who he said would “receive a one-time payment of $770.” Small comfort to someone who just lost his house.
“The good news is, I think that a lot of this nonsense is about to end,” concluded Kiley.
Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.