The fires are still raging in Los Angeles County, but once contained and extinguished, this fiasco will be investigated. These fires are likely to be the costliest natural disaster in American history. The cuts to the Los Angeles Fire Department, the scrubbing of LAFD memos pointing to deficiencies in the department, and the lack of water have all been documented, especially for the Palisades blaze. Independent reporter Michael Shellenberger has tracked the behind-the-scenes fiasco that led to this catastrophe.
For the Palisades blaze, it took LAFD almost an hour to respond. And yes, while the cuts to the LAFD proved damaging, its chief, Kristin Crowley, also geared her department toward training that had little to do with fighting fires. In short, people want firefighters to save their homes—they don’t care if a black lesbian does it. The DEI nonsense played a significant role in the LAFD’s degraded and shambolic response to these wildfires, which whistleblowers can attest. The cost of these woke initiatives is also immense, and resupply can become a byzantine journey as LA will only work with pro-DEI vendors. A few of them reached out to Shellenberger to vent about the current state of the department [emphasis mine]:
They [LAFD whistleblowers] say the reason they arrived too late to stop the fires from becoming catastrophic was because of severe budget cuts. The Fire Department did not pre-deploy fire engines to strategic locations, and helicopters arrived half an hour too late to put out the Palisades.
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“That [Santa Ynez] reservoir being closed did not allow helicopters to drop and suck water up from five minutes away,” a new firefighter whistleblower, the third who has come forward, told me. “Instead, they had to fly 10 to 15 minutes away to go get water somewhere else.”
The problem is that the LA Fire Department is one of the most severely understaffed of America’s 10 largest cities. It has less than a single firefighter per 1,000 residents compared to Chicago, Dallas, and Houston, which have twice as many.
“ In 1960, our city population was 2.5 million, and we had 112 fire stations. In 2020, our city population was 3.9 million, and we had 106 stations,” a representative of LA’s firefighters ’ union testified last month. “That's 1.4 million more people and six fewer fire stations.”
This undermines the Department’s ability to respond to emergencies. “In 2020, the average emergency response time was seven minutes and 53 seconds, nearly double the NFPA recommendation.”
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The third firefighter whistleblower says the firefighters are being put in danger by budget cuts. “Even last week,” the person said, “I wanted to work and I was told, ‘Sorry dude, we don't have a seat for you to fill because there's not enough apparatuses,’” meaning fire engines or other equipment.
One hundred fire engines and other apparatus are currently out of service because the city cut the Fire Department’s budget, and it couldn’t afford to hire mechanics to fix equipment.
“We have a crack about halfway down our water tank. Half of our [engines and other] apparatuses are broken. They were sending rookies, new probationary firefighters, out to the field last year with no department-required brush jackets.”
The firefighters lack life-saving equipment. “We were running out of electrodes to do EKGs,” the person said. “We've been running out of gloves. We've been running out of drugs, you name it. There's been ambulances that have been having to steal stuff or borrow stuff from the hospitals just to stay available.”
At the meeting last month, the president of the city’s firefighters union warned, “If we cut one position, if we close one station… the residents of Los Angeles are going to pay the ultimate sacrifice, and someone will die.”
All this and yet Los Angeles is one of the richest cities in the world. Eighty-four of America’s richest 400 people live in California, and LA is home to 26 billionaires who collectively possess a net worth of approximately $185 billion.
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As such, the problem is not poverty, it is severe mismanagement and bad governance. Not only is the city’s mismanagement to blame for LA’s disastrous response to the fire, but it’s also responsible for the city’s ongoing homelessness disaster.
Why is that?
Part of the reason is the city’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI) programs. “The city will only purchase from vendors that support DEI,” said the firefighter. “So we'll go with a vendor that we have to pay twice as much, or the shipment may take twice as long, in order for it to be a DEI vendor rather than the vendor who has it at half the price and can get it to us tomorrow.”
The whistleblower said that DEI programs put firefighters and the public in danger. “I personally witnessed in my own drill tower them making and passing women just to get their [female quota] numbers even though they didn't have to meet all the criteria the men did.”
When asked what those criteria were, the person said, “A certain amount of push-ups. Holding a certain size hose line. Throwing a certain ladder. We no longer require two firefighters to be able to throw a 35-foot ladder because of the amount of women that were failing that. So now, it's just a three-person ladder. We no longer require that as a job requirement. In the field that doesn't work because we don't have enough people to spare when a fire is happening to just throw one ladder.”
The DEI programs are also expensive, distract attention away from preventing and fighting fires, and result in the Fire Department hiring unqualified people, whistleblowers said. “Do we really need to sink millions a year into DEI? I don't think so.”
Another reason is corruption, which drains money from the city’s coffers, including for firefighting.
Liberalism seems to be all show, though some of you know that already. It’s the production, but when real life comes knocking, everything and everyone gets their face beat in by reality. DEI may sound good, but it killed the LAFD’s ability to combat fires. The corruption and mismanagement all reared their ugly heads with these county fires. You need to do the work, and, at times, the solution doesn’t comport with the liberal narrative because life isn’t some college exercise.
The political class in California went academic with emergency response units, among other things, and got wrecked. It’s a byproduct of virtual single-party rule.