6 Reasons the LA Fires were Horrendous

The Los Angeles fires that began January 7—the worst ever for this city—were made much worse by a continuing lack of proper leadership and competence. It is crucial, going forward, that these issues be addressed and rectified in order to mitigate future potential catastrophic events like this.

There is a lot of misinformation and lies being spoken and spread by the political right-wing for partisan reasons. Much of it is wrong. There is also misinformation and obfuscation by the political left, in defense of the Los Angeles Mayor and LA City Leadership.

This is not a political issue. At least it should not be. It is an issue of Leadership and Competence. That’s what it must be for this catastrophe to not be swept under the rug and forgotten in a year. (Which, frankly, is likely to occur given the inability of most politicians to remain focused on changes that should be implemented. Particularly when those changes could balloon a city’s or county’s annual budget.)

This country (and city) have seen many catastrophic fires in the last 10+ years. The Paradise fire (Paradise, CA), the Woolsey fire (Los Angeles plus LA County), the Marshall fire (Boulder County, CO), the Lahaina fire (Maui), and so many more. When are we going to open our eyes and ask the question “What can we do to mitigate future catastrophes?” And then actually take action and hire the right leaders to implement needed changes and effective strategies?

I do not accept that there isn’t anything we can do. When has America said, “Oh well, that’s life [or that’s nature], there’s nothing we can do”? I’ve been hearing this a lot recently. Some California university professor just said this in an interview last week. Seriously?

I worked directly under the auspices of LA City Government for four years (2015 – 2019), as well as been involved in two major issues with the leadership of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) from 2011 – 2017. So my view and experience is not coming from “armchair ignorance” or internet “research.”

The following are just some of the failures of Leadership, Planning, and Foresight by the LA City Government, the LA County Government, and the LADWP:

1) We knew this major wind event was coming, many days in advance. The LA Mayor has said that assets were pre-positioned in advance, to combat potential fires. I have yet to see, read or hear EXACTLY what that entailed, other than the Mayor referencing "122 additional firefighters" being added or ready. Clearly, it wasn’t enough. Far from it. I suspect that all this talk about pre-positioned assets is a bunch of “cover our rear” rhetoric. Otherwise, where is the delineation publicly of what and where all these assets were pre-positioned?

Jonathan Vigliotti of CBS News asked Mayor Karen Bass at the January 9 morning press conference, where were the fire engines in the Pacific Palisades? He and his news crew arrived in the Palisades after the fire broke out, and watched hundreds of homes burn to the ground for hours, and there were NO fire engines during this time. Why? How could this happen if there really was pre-positioned assets?

2) For those following any of this, you no doubt heard about the issue with the lack of water in the fire hydrants in the Palisades. (Or running out early.) It was—at least in the early stages—not an issue of water availability, but of water pressure. Water pressure drops when LADWP’s storage tanks start getting depleted. Which apparently began after just ONE of the three large storage tanks in the Palisades began getting depleted. (For those that are hearing this was because power was cut to the Palisades at some point, that is not so. There is no electrical power used or needed with the storage tanks feeding the fire hydrants. But other cities’ water systems may operate differently.)

Why were there only 3 storage tanks in the Palisades? Why would the system begin failing, when only one storage tank starts getting depleted? This is an extreme failure by the LADWP.

3) The Santa Ynez Reservoir—that is IN the Palisades—was offline, and not available to firefighters. It had been offline for a year. Why? LADWP says it was due to repairs that needed to be made to its cover, and the process they must follow per the city’s rules for Requests for Proposals (“RFP”) and Requests for Bids (“RFB”) for contracted repairs. But a full year…?

I’m familiar with LADWP’s process for RFPs and RFBs. I was in regular communication with LADWP’s leadership, when this process was being conducted over one particular phase of the River Supply Conduit Project in connection with the Silver Lake Reservoir Complex.

Bottom line, this process does not have to take a year or years. It can move pretty damn quick—if the LADWP is on top of it or prioritizes it.

That this apparently sat on a back burner, is unconscionable when we are in a drought. And frankly, incompetent.

4) Aircraft were grounded and not allowed in the air on the first day of the fire (January 7). We can assume that decision was entirely correct even for fixed-wing aircraft, some of which can fly in winds of up to 40-50mph, such as the Erickson Aero Tanker. We know wind speeds and gusts were higher on January 7 for some if not all of the day.

But on the following day (Wednesday, January 8), aircraft were allowed into the air to fight both the Palisades fire and Eaton fire. On that afternoon, there were only two helicopters in the air fighting the Palisades fire, and two helicopters in the air fighting the Eaton fire. This was per the real-time satellite / software mapping that some of the local news stations have (KCAL news, for example), that actually show the aircraft operating over Los Angeles and their specific call or tracking numbers. This was in the middle of the day.

Why were there only four helicopters in the air working in the middle of the day? Where are the dozens needed? Where were the Super Scooper planes? That can scoop up ocean water for water drops in the Palisades? Where were the Erickson Aero Tankers and other fixed-wing aircraft, that can drop way more water than the standard LAFD water-dropping helicopter or the standard LA County Fire water-dropping helicopter?

NONE of this was pre-positioned, and NONE of this was apparently here and available to fight the fires on Wednesday. We didn’t see significant numbers of aircraft in the air until Thursday afternoon or evening. Furthermore, there are some types of fixed-wing aircraft that can fight fire at night. We apparently had none of this until at least Thursday or Friday.

Additionally, why does LAFD and LA County Fire only have one Chinook firefighting helicopter between them? (Which can drop ten times as much as a regular LAFD / LA County Fire helicopter can drop.) We did not see this in use on Wednesday, but by Friday or Saturday, we finally had three Chinooks here, whereby two came from other counties. But… why did it take so long to get these from other counties? Where was the planning? Where was the call that could have been placed on the first day of the fires to get them here in a day, if not hours?

These same questions can and should be asked for ALL the aircraft that was finally here late Thursday, Friday, Saturday. They should have been called for on the first day when we saw the extreme devastation happening real time, and not taken days to be called for. (Or called for and then days to arrive.)

This was a massive, massive failure by the City of Los Angeles, in terms of lack of preparation, lack of proper pre-positioned assets, and lack of rapid response. Same goes for the LA C0unty Government.

5) On Wednesday afternoon, I was asking myself, “Where is the National Guard?” Why haven’t they been called up already? They will be needed. There will be looting. They can alleviate and handle some of the duties the LAPD and LAFD are currently dealing with.

I began making calls on Wednesday and asking staffers at the Governor’s office, the Mayor’s office, and others. I’m a “nobody,” but I implored those I spoke with to get my question/ask to the Governor and Mayor or at least senior staffers. I don’t know if they did. But by Wednesday evening or at Thursday morning’s press conference, others were asking about the National Guard.

Yet it wasn’t until late Thursday afternoon that the request for the National Guard was finally made, then approved. When that happened, they began coming in that very night. Great.

But WHY wasn’t this done on Tuesday…? Why did it take a full 2 days + 6 hours to happen? WHERE was the leadership and foresight on this?

6) In my calls to the Governor’s, Mayor’s and other offices on Wednesday, I also asked where are the Federal firefighters and their equipment and aircraft? They exist to fire wildfires. Can we get them here? Is anyone making a request for them? The staffers I spoke to didn’t know. The staffer in the Mayor’s office literally said to me, “I’ll give you the website address for the Mayor’s latest press release, and you’ll probably find your answers there.” I responded politely, “Unlikely.” But I took down the specific website address. After the call, I looked it up. Not only did the press release not answer my only two questions, but it was from the day before (!), from Tuesday, the day the fires started. There had been no new press release since then.

Bottom line, Federal firefighters and their equipment to fight wildfires—and all their aircraft (in which they have a reported 200-300)—were not requested on Tuesday. I do not know which day they were finally requested, but they didn’t start arriving till late in the week. Why? Why apparently wasn’t the “call-when-needed” request made on Tuesday…? Because if it was, they would have started arriving by Wednesday at the latest.

Was this an issue of the Mayor not wanting to explode the city’s annual budget? That she perhaps thought the city and county could handle without costing hundreds of thousands of dollars (or perhaps more)? Who knows at this juncture. But if this was the reason for the delay, then this—in the face of what we literally saw transpiring on Tuesday—is a complete failure of situational awareness and leadership.

In Conclusion:

These are some of the abject failures of proper preparation and proper response. One of the major counter-arguments against anything I’ve been saying, is that this is “unprecedented” and a “once-in-a-generation event.” And that no amount of preparation or response would have made a difference. I don’t agree at all. That is plain and utter BS.

Yes, there would have been devastation no matter what. Major devastation. But c’mon, everyone. If we had the necessary water infrastructure, the necessary assets, the proper pre-positioning of assets… who thinks that 75% (estimate) of the Palisades and some of Malibu would still have been lost?

On Sunday (January 12), the LA County Fire Chief was interviewed by one of our local reporters, who asked a very simple but pointed question. Did we have enough resources, assets and pre-positioning? After a short pause, the Fire Chief said “No.” But then pivoted away from the specifics of that question.

Now I’m not picking on the LA County Fire Chief here. He’s saying what he can say without being fired or reprimanded by his boss, the LA County Government. We already saw what happened when the LA City Fire Chief said the city failed the LAFD in one or more interviews the day before. The public press conference she and the Mayor were to have later in that day, was cancelled by the Mayor and those two then went into a closed-door meeting. Where undoubtedly the Fire Chief was reprimanded and put in her place. (She has not been fired as of this writing. But I wouldn’t be surprised if she eventually is, or forced to resign when all this is over.)

As to the failures of the LADWP, they are supposed to be accountable to the city and citizens of LA. But they are not. They are not elected, nobody in leadership at LADWP is. There’s only one person who’s directly accountable, and that is the General Manager (the head of this massive agency), who is appointed by the Mayor and then approved (or not) by the LADWP Board of Commissioners. That’s it. And the current General Manager was only hired this past year. (And at a salary of $750,000 per year, making this position the highest paid position of anyone working for the City of LA. Almost twice what the President of the United States earns.)

But it is up to the city—the Mayor and the 15 City Councilmembers—to hold the LADWP accountable. And they do not. They never do. The previous Mayor, Eric Garcetti, certainly never did.

Why? Why is the LADWP never truly held accountable for failings? Because they “own” the Mayor and the 15 City Councilmembers. One cannot even get elected if you don’t have the support of the LADWP. (Or if one does call for reform in an election bid and somehow wins, that newly elected politician changes their tune and stops talking about reform.)

Why does the LADWP “own” LA City’s politicians? At least partly due to the excess revenue the LADWP gets from ratepayers in the city, that is given to the city’s General Fund—which is hundreds of millions of dollars every year. This is like cocaine to city politicians. They always want this money and therefore shut up and never pursue any reform of the LADWP.

Shouldn’t the excess money go back to the citizens, who have overpaid? Or result in a lower electric and water rate? Of course! But it doesn’t.

Los Angeles needs better leadership. And unless or until we get that, we’ll get more Palisades fires. More Woolsey fires. We already had that Woolsey fire six years ago, that the city leadership apparently learned nothing from that.

Lastly, for those that want to criticize me because I’m not being a “team player” and defending fellow Democrats? Sorry, guys. But as I said at the top, this is not—and should not be—about politics and partisanship. This is about proper leadership and competency. People’s actual lives and property are at stake, and the losses sustained by thousands of people in this latest fire must outweigh political BS. I have never and will not defend Democrats simply because it’s “my team.” This is why we have such mediocre leadership here in LA as well as across the country.

Are we going to carve a new way forward? A new path with better and more responsible leadership? Unlikely. This will likely all get swept under the rug in the coming year and chalked up to being an “anomaly,” “unforeseen,” and/or “an unfortunate natural disaster.”

But if we don’t sweep this whole catastrophe under the rug, AND don’t say “It was a once-in-a-lifetime tragedy and will never happen again to us”… then maybe, just maybe, we have a chance?

And lest this not be said enough: Deep appreciation to ALL the firefighters, including those who traveled here from near or afar. Thank you.