How Policy Failures Led to Devastation in California
24:49 Share

From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch. The Los Angeles wildfires still are not entirely contained after nearly a week. The fires have killed at least 24 people, swept through some 40,000 acres, and destroyed some 12,300 structures, such as homes and businesses. Governor Gavin Newsom says the fires may be the costliest natural disaster in American history.

and certainly the fires are terrible to behold in their destruction. The political blame shifting naturally is already underway in the state and from Washington. What will be the political fallout from the fires, and what are some of the policy lessons we can see now, even before all the fires have been put out? Welcome. I'm Paul Gigot, and this is Potomac Watch, the daily opinion page podcast of The Wall Street Journal, and I'm here with

two of my West Coast colleagues, Alicia Finley, based in California, Kim Strauss, usually on the West Coast, but this few days in Washington, D.C., but both are experienced Western fire watchers. Alicia, let's just get the facts first here. How are the Santa Ana winds now? They say they're going to be picking up again, are they? Well, we've got them out here probably, Gus, around 30 to 40 miles per hour. Luckily, they're

Not as bad as they have been in LA where you were getting gusts of up to 100 miles per hour last week, but the Santa Anas are supposed to continue for the next few days. And actually this is pretty normal for this time of year. Santa Anas usually come between the months of October and January. And these are basically just very strong, dry winds that come down from the mountains.

And how far are you located south of L.A.? About 50 miles. 50 miles. Okay. So it's still in the area. Now, the Palisades Fire is probably the least contained of all of them, and it's now threatening Brentwood, Encino, and even Westwood, where UCLA is located, Alicia. So this is truly a historic fire for Los Angeles County.

Right, so they haven't had one of these that has really gone into more urban, I wouldn't even call these urban, these are suburban areas still, since 1951 when there was one in Bel Air. And part of the problem is just there's been a lot of fire suppression and not enough which will get into fire mitigation and there's a lot of brush has been built up in these canyon areas and this is an urban wild interface. I live in one and there's the natural environment is a chaparral and there's

a lot of brush. Well, explain that urban-rural interface for us. I mean, when I think, when you look at the photos of the Pacific Palisades, all those homes burnt, it looks like they're all pretty close together. Well, yes, but there's also a lot of hillsides. And so part of the problem is in these Palisades area, you do have a lot of homes that are close together. And that means that the fire can spread and the birds can fly and hop.

But you also have a lot of hillside. And because there's a lot of fuel to burn on this hillside, and because this is generally not cleared, it just builds up and builds up. And therefore, once every few decades, it's going to burn.

Right. And we've seen that, of course, in Northern California. There was a couple of years ago, a really bad fire up in the Napa Valley, Sonoma and so on. And that does happen every so often. And Kim, growing up in Oregon, you saw those all the time. Kim, as you look at this,

The mayor of L.A., Mayor Bass, is being blamed for being in Ghana when the fires broke out. I have a hard time blaming her for that. I mean, you know, mayors do take trips and you can't predict when fires are going to start. But she's getting blamed for that, something like 100,000 people.

people have signed a petition they have recalled so far. So she is in some political duress. I wonder what you think about the fairness of that. Well, look, I think one thing adding to it is that she had said when she was running for office that she was not going to take overseas trips like this. And so that has come back to bite her. I agree with you that there probably wouldn't have been anything she could have done much differently at the time, because what we're finding here is

is that this is a result of very bad planning, a lack of planning over the years, to Alicia's point. There's a lot of Democrats right now wailing about climate change. I would argue that what we know is that there has not been a trend in rainfall change in California for the last hundred years. Sometimes they have wet years, sometimes they have dry years. That's always been the case.

What we do know, to Alicia's point, and you can look all the way back at evidence from prehistoric times, is that California has a unique topography and climate that makes it extremely vulnerable to wildfire. And in light of that, and in light of this urban-wild interface that

Alicia noted, there should have been a premium put on preparing for a situation just like this in terms of water and to the mitigation against fire, fuel cleanup, controlled burns, but also a water infrastructure that had the ability to deal with a massive outbreak like this.

What we know, and this is the failure of both LA and not just Bass, but also politicians preceding her, but Bass and Gavin Newsom at a state level is that those preparations, that kind of forward planning has never been done. And we are now seeing the consequences, a huge reservoir in the Palisades that had been under repair for more than a year. It was empty. It probably wouldn't have saved the day, but it would have made a big difference in

and simply infrastructure, including pipes that had no ability to deal with a situation like this. Sure, you can water your yard, but these hydrants were not going to stand up to a situation like this. And when you are a public official, your most important job is protecting your citizenry. And that is the enormous failure here and incompetence among the current governing class. Let's break this down. First, take the water point. And then I want to get into the forest management, tree trimming.

and fire breaks and whatnot. Alicia, on the water issue, Donald Trump has criticized Newsom for the classic old Delta smelt water diversion from the North, where we know this. I don't know, you probably have nightmares about writing editorials about Delta smelt since you've written so many of them going back so many years. But the point is that he has criticized Newsom and says, look, they take the winter runoff from the Sierras.

and instead of letting it be stored or sent down to state for particularly for the central valley which needs the water for farming they flush it out into the pacific ocean but does that really a factor in this case with the fires in southern california so

So no. So as you pointed out, what happens is the snowpack in the Sierra Nevadas and as that melts during the spring, all that water, that runoff goes into the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and there are pumps to push that water south to farmers in Central Valley or Southern California.

What has happened over the years is there are restrictions on how much water that can be pumped down to the south in order to protect the Delta smelter and also another species of salmon. And that is what Trump is alluding to. So he has a point, but maybe not in this case. Not in this case. The issue in Los Angeles was that the fire hydrants ran dry because there wasn't enough water pressure in the

And that was partly because of the velocity. There was just so much demand from the firefighters for the water that perhaps might have been mitigated if they had had bigger water tanks and bigger water pipes.

But then you would really have to redesign the entire LA infrastructure. The Department of Water and Power is actually the municipal utility. And they have, let's just say, longstanding problems with their infrastructure in which they are already having to replace pipes at about a rate of 0.5% every year. So yes, the local water infrastructure has had problems and they're

been mostly focused on just maintaining their infrastructure, not actually focused on how do you renovate it to ensure that the city and the area is prepared for wildfires. And some of these pipes are 60 years old. Like all infrastructure, whether it's the New York subway system or water treatment plants around the country, they need updating. They need to be maintained.

And one of the, I think, failures of modern government, particularly progressive government, is that they spend the money not on upgrading and maintaining infrastructure, but on transfer payments or public sector pensions and salaries or all sorts of other things.

And the infrastructure goes wanting. We saw that in New York when it has come to the subways over the years, certainly subway cars and trains, tracks. And I guess that's the critique, Kim, of L.A. And is it a fair one? Well, yeah. And at a statewide level, too. I mean, let's make a comparison of the money that Gavin Newsom has thrown at the homeless situation, which has largely encouraged more people to be homeless, but

in recent years compared to wildfire mitigation or infrastructure improvement. Or for that matter, and I think this is a really big one, the amount of money that California has earmarked for climate change action, i.e. the amount of money they're throwing into electric vehicle subsidies and all of these things that aren't making one whit of difference in global climate or temperature, but are sucking extraordinary amounts of money. And I would note that this has been replicated at the

federal level, at Biden's level. We had this huge infrastructure bill that passed in his first year of Congress. And how much of that went to actually dealing with our bridges that are collapsing or L.A.'s

massive pipe problem or any of that, and how much of it went to EV charging stations around the country that haven't been built, by the way, and other kind of feel-good projects that make the liberal elite believe that they're doing something for climate change while they do nothing to get ready for some of the changes or current problems that we actually have. And again, I think that is a failure at the national, state, and local level.

We're going to take a break. We'll talk about forest management in California when we come back.

Welcome back. I'm Paul Gigot here with Kim Strassel and Alicia Finley. Let's take on this forest management and tree trimming issue, Alicia. After those fires in Northern California, which were terribly destructive and affected some friends of mine, Newsom did say, okay, we're going to spend more money on forest management. Has he spent enough or is he still short-selling the problem? So I think there are two problems here. One

One is the amount of spending. He has increased funding for wildfire mitigation from initially from 2019 levels. It's roughly doubled, but in recent years he's actually cut back on some of that, or in the last year or two. And his current budget fire mitigation actually is about half levels it was in 2022. Some of this is actually a local responsibility.

for LA County and the Department of Water and Power, actually because it has its own territory. There's tree trimming and then there's also brush clearing. In Southern California, it's mostly brush clearing. You have to do some tree trimming around the utility lines and that is a utility responsibility. And around where we are, we get, you know, the Southern California Edison comes in and they actually trim the trees around any power lines. And I think they've actually been pretty responsible about that.

Now, the issue is with the local governments, it really depends. It could be in this case that LA County just didn't do enough to clear brush and put in fuel breaks. I know Orange County has actually been doing a lot of that in the land that it owns. There are restrictions, environmental restrictions that can make this difficult. You actually have to get state permits when you do this on land and that opens up a whole nother

box of problems because it could take a couple years just to get a permit to start on some of these tree trimming or brush clearing projects and don't even start trying to do any kind of prescribed burns in these areas, especially if they're homes that you really just can't do. And plus, that actually also raises environment or air quality issues. And that has made it difficult to do those. All right. Let's listen to John Barrasso, current chairman of the Senate Energy Committee on Face the Nation, talk about the fires and what Congress might do.

It's heartbreaking to hear the fire chief say that they've diverted all of this money away from the fire department to be used for social programs when they were already stretched too thin. So yes, I expect there's going to be hearings, there's going to be requests of Congress. There can't be a blank check on this, however, because people want to make sure that as rebuilding occurs, as things go on,

in California, they have to be resilient so that these sorts of things can't happen again. And the policies of the liberal administration out there, I believe, have made these fires worse. I expect that there will be strings attached to money that is ultimately approved. And it has to do with being ready the next time because this was a gross failure this time. I guess, Kim, this leads to the question of whether or not any real lessons will be learned here.

I mean, a lot of these homes that are burning in the Palisades, especially, these are well-to-do neighborhoods. And you hate to see anybody, any individual or families suffer this kind of trauma. But the question is, certainly Democrats, nearly all of them,

progressive voters, and they have endorsed these politicians and these policies. Do you think that there's going to be any kind of reckoning here or awakening, however you want to term it? Well, the politicians are certainly nervous. And you saw that petition you noted about Karen Bass, 100,000 people have signed it already. Notably, I saw that Gavin Newsom came out, and one of the things he has now done is he has suspended all environmental reviews for the rebuilding process.

which is striking, by the way, because California loves its permitting process. It has the California Environmental Quality Act, and normally it can take years under review of that act to get permission to rebuild. And he knows that if he keeps that in place, they're going to throw him out on his ear faster than he can say hello. And Kim, isn't that an admission? Yes. That

These laws are stupid. Yes. That they hold back exactly the sort of mitigation and adaptation measures you need. Absolutely. Absolutely. And people have noted that he did it in a blanket sort of way. Sometimes there's still a way in which you can get permission to move ahead, but they have the ability to retroactively make sure you complied with the law. He got rid of all of that because he understands that, you know, there's going to be guys with pitchforks coming if he decides to kind of keep to all of these additional laws.

California rules. One thing, though, that I would note that Democrats, California Democrats, but more broadly from a national level, are also going to have to reckon with if they want to break free and make good with voters. Is this one piece of the iron triangle, as it were, of Democratic special interests, which are very powerful environmental groups?

And if you look at California, any good idea that's ever come along has been squashed by those environmental groups and their power. I mean, there were talk about desalinization plants in the L.A. area to make sure that there was more water there. That was all nixed because supposedly they're bad plants.

for marine life. Also, you need power to run those plants. The best idea would be nuclear power. Environmental groups said, no, you can't do that. You look at a federal level, the Sierra Club back in 2007, there was gonna be some legislation or movement to allow for controlled burns

and to have special exemptions from the National Environmental Policy Act review process to have those controlled burns. They sued to stop that. Democrats under pressure from environmental groups recently blocked a proposal by Republicans called the Fixed Our Forests Act, which was going to allow for

quicker thinning and federal force. Everywhere you turn, whenever there's an idea to handle this problem, Democrats pushed by their very wealthy, very well-heed environmental groups are pushing back. And they're going to have to break that link somehow and break free of that if they want to get better on any of these ideas. We're going to take another break. And when we come back, we'll talk about the strings that Republicans might put on any federal aid to California when we come back.

Don't forget, you can reach the latest episode of Potomac Watch anytime. Just ask your smart speaker. Play the Opinion Potomac Watch podcast. That is Play the Opinion Potomac Watch podcast. From the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch.

Welcome back. I'm Paul Gigot here with Kim Strassel and Alicia Finley on Potomac Watch. This point, Alicia, that Kim made earlier, I think is a very important one. And that is if you're a politician in California, office holder of policymaker, you've been spending all of your money and resources and focus on trying to actually change the climate.

You are trying to change the global temperatures, right? That's what EVs are all about. That's what charging stations are all about. That's what mandates for renewable energy are all about. They are all about reducing CO2 emissions in the name of changing global temperatures. So you believe in climate change. It's an existential threat. You're trying to stop it.

But of course, everything California does will have zero effect on global temperatures because emissions are global and the climate will be affected by what happens in China or Africa or India or elsewhere much more than it will be of what happens in California. But what you can do if you're Gavin Newsom or Karen Bass is

is you can actually spend money on protecting your citizens from the consequences that you say you expect from climate change. And yet that's not what they do. When a disaster happens and the destruction is severe, they go, oh, that's climate change. We can't do anything about it.

Well, Gavin Newsom's last budget includes about $14.7 billion for clean energy transition and electric vehicles, while providing only about $2.6 billion total for wildfire mitigation and forest resilience.

And you're right on that, that the state, including the utilities, by the way, especially the Pacific Gas and Electric up north, have been spending increasing amounts of money on green energy, these battery power to back up the grid, as well as the state is now embarking on these offshore floating wind turbines, which really have never been done anywhere in the world and are going to be extremely expensive.

both for customers or rate payers, utility rate payers and the state, because the state is essentially going to guarantee these wind turbines regardless. Meantime, it's just not doing enough to manage the land. In California, there's a lot of public land in California, most of which isn't developed. And part of that is by design. The state has...

To Kim's point, it has limited the extent to which developers, anything can be built in the state because it wants to maintain this pristine, natural environment. But the result of that is it's just not maintained. And you don't have, to Kim's point, prescribed burns. You don't have tree thinning. You don't have brush clearing or any of that. Fire breaks. Fire breaks, and especially fire breaks. And that's the most important because it can be very difficult in any...

in areas that do have homes, like the Palisades, kind of spread out a little bit. You can't really do prescribed burns in those areas, but you can put in fuel breaks. And that's something that I think the state hasn't done enough of.

Kim, last word. Republicans are talking about if California wants money, federal money for this, maybe we'll just ask Democrats in Congress to help on the debt ceiling increase. What do you think of that trade? Let me put it this way. When John Barrasso said there might be some strings attached to me...

That's okay. If you want to say, look, I think that as a consequence of some of these dollars, there needs to be some intelligent conversation and policy made to make sure that federal taxpayers aren't bailing out California for the same thing next year and the year after that.

The debt ceiling, now that's a little bit more risky because the way I look at it, Paul, is it's taking the ultimate emotional hostage. We can have a debate as to how much money the federal government gives California or these disasters and then the budget for federal disaster aid has just been skyrocketing. We need to have a national debate about this.

But on the assumption that some money is going to go to California, if you've decided that you're gonna tie that to Republicans and Democrats increasing the debt ceiling, you better be prepared to shoot that hostage because it may not work in the end.

And then you're in a situation where you have not raised the debt ceiling and you are also denying tens of thousands of homeless Californians any help in rebuilding, et cetera. Do you really want to be the party that made that decision? So again, if you're all for it and you're willing to shoot that hostage, go ahead and play that high stakes game. If I were giving advice to Republicans, I would suggest maybe a few less dire sort of high stakes

question marks attached to any aid for California. All right, Kim and Alicia, thank you both. And thank you all for listening. We're here every day on Potomac Watch. Hope you're here with us tomorrow as the Trump nominees face their confirmation fights.