“This Was Preventable”

The Palisades Fire exposed deadly flaws in L.A.’s leadership. From water shortages to fire department cuts, it’s time to hold our officials accountable. 

Every day, engineers and architects build bridges and buildings using the predictability of disaster, trying their hardest to avert lives being lost and property being destroyed in the event of an emergency. 

Just as it is an engineer’s responsibility to ensure that bridges withstand earthquakes and floods, the principle duty of those we entrust to protect and govern us—politicians—is to anticipate and prevent a wide range of unfortunate events and safeguard the citizens they represent.

The dramatic failure of local and state-elected officials in Los Angeles (LA) to mitigate the effects of the extreme weather that led to the Palisades fire must be addressed by voters removing officials responsible from office. State and local officials failed to properly prepare for the fire in the weeks leading up to it by sending too few firefighters to the scene before a known high wind event, ignoring key fire infrastructure, and effectively lowering the budget of the LAFD, all in the most fire-ridden state in America.

On the morning of January 6th this year, a red flag warning was instituted across southern California by the National Weather Service (NWS) because of projected low humidity and high winds. Such weather conditions could be predicted by officials years before they were detected by the NWS: Southern California has had numerous fires because of its dry, windy conditions, and climate change, which is thought to exacerbate them, according to National Geographic.

Because of the NWS’ projection, in the weeks leading up to the red flag warning, government officials, such as CAL Fire director Joe Tyler, urged locals to create “go bags” containing their most important belongings in the event that they needed to evacuate, according to CBS News.

However, while some officials, like Tyler, urged civilians to prepare for fires, they themselves did very little in advance of the fire. According to public records, Cal-Fire moved 45 fire trucks and six hand crews to Southern California and prepositioned 65 local fire trucks to fire-prone areas in preparation for the high winds which eventually sparked the recent LA Fires. 

This was not nearly enough.

Over the course of the LA Fires, 1,002 fire trucks from Cal Fire, 138 hand crews and 160 trucks from other states were deployed to the region, with many of them trickling into LA throughout the course of the fires rather than being there all along.

While it is important to note that the number of how many CAL FIRE squads were already in Southern California is unknown, the fact that hundreds of fire trucks that would eventually end up in LA were not moved to the area preemptively reflects a lack of initiative from city and state leadership—something that elected officials should have mandated.

If more assets were prepositioned before the fires, it is obvious that more structures, and possibly lives, would have been saved while they raged.

Meanwhile, as homes burned, residents evacuated and people lost their lives, Governor Newsom was running PR on his disastrous preparations for the fires by visiting the Palisades the day after the fire started, deflecting blame to local officials, and thanking then-President Joe Biden for reimbursing the state for firefighting costs, nevermind the costs residents accrued when their homes burned to the ground.

In addition to California and Newsom’s negligence in terms of prepositioning assets before the fires, a slow and useless bureaucracy in the state directly contributed to issues with water supply in the Palisades.

The Santa Ynez Reservoir was built in 1964 after a devastating fire three years prior, which burned almost 500 houses. It was constructed to mitigate the risk of wildfire in the growing Pacific Palisades, according to the  LA Times. In January 2024, the LA Department of Water and Power (LADWP) found a tear in the cover of the reservoir, which was built to hold 117 million gallons of water.

This began a $130,000 saga of incompetence in which a fire reservoir earmarked for urgent repairs by engineers was still not ready for use 11 months after the damage was discovered.

A small tear in a reservoir cover that wasn’t even in use for the majority of the reservoir’s life should result in an immediate, quick fix.

The public cannot directly hold unelected officials accountable for this failure. We cannot fire LADWP staff who failed to prioritize fire preparedness, nor can we instill the value of protecting critical infrastructure into such individuals. Therefore, we must vote for erected officials who support these values. Based on their actions preceding the Palisades Fire, it is clear that the current administration—from Mayor Bass to Representative Traci Park to Governor Newsom—does not. 

Throughout the recent fires, one line was repeated, almost incessantly, by experts on the news, seemingly in excuse of water shortages firefighters were facing: the system in the Palisades was not “built for fighting wildfires.”

Based on evidence that the Santa Ynez Reservoir was empty during the Palisades fire—despite being built for such events— this is only half true.

An image of the San Ynez Reservoir (Photograph: LA Times)

While the reservoir may not have provided enough water to completely stop the fire, it was still part of the system designed to fight them. At the time of the fire, tanks being used held only 2.5% of their full capacity. So-called experts who dismissed the reservoir’s potential impact either failed to think logically or were running damage control for politicians and bureaucrats responsible for enabling the extent of the damage.  

Though some may argue otherwise, having water to fight fires saves lives and property. Mismanagement and poor planning by city and state leaders left the Palisades without it when it mattered most. Even if water wouldn’t have saved every structure, the fact that anyone must ask whether the second-largest city in America had water available during a fire is deeply troubling.  

If California Governor Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass governed a region unfamiliar with wildfires, such incompetence might be excusable. But in a state notorious for them, their failures—and their refusal to take responsibility—should end their political careers if voters care about trust, competence, and accountability. 

Aside from the water supply failures, it is shocking that LA did not have more resources ready to combat wildfires. In one of the most fire-prone cities in the world, elected officials should have invested heavily in the fire department. Instead, Mayor Bass cut the LAFD’s budget of the LAFD by $17 million shortly after taking office, before a union negotiation raised firefighter salaries.

While that raise may appear to increase the budget on paper, cutting funding beforehand lowered the department’s readiness for fire season.

This cut, which former fire department Chief Crawley warned would diminish the LAFD's ability to fight fires, makes no sense in hindsight after predictable fires that have been labeled the most costly disaster in U.S. history and are expected to cost roughly $275 billion.

If Mayor Bass had increased LAFD’s nearly $900 million budget by $250 billion—or 27,500% (a hypothetical, of course)—and that prevented all fire damage, it would have saved taxpayers billions. That illustrates just how illogical the budget cut was, especially in a city where massive fires are almost guaranteed.

The bottom line is this: the Palisades and Eaton fires were predictable. City mismanagement allowed them to grow beyond control. Our leaders failed to insulate us from disaster, and we must demand better.

A year from now, voters must choose leaders who uphold the basic responsibilities of governance—not those who run on lofty promises but fail to deliver. Only when competence becomes a political priority will voters see their most basic needs fulfilled.