Tag: LA fires

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BWBB – LA Mayor Karen Bass handed out rich city contracts, forcing drastic cuts to fire department months before deadly wildfires: records

Los Angeles was forced to slash funding for the fire department after Mayor Karen Bass awarded gilded contracts to city workers, a review of public records shows.

The trouble began early last year after Bass settled contract negotiations with public sector unions. In dozens of agreements, the city’s civilian employees pocketed 20 to 25 percent wage hikes over five years and other goodies that cost the city $4.5 billion over the life of the contracts, according to an analysis by the city’s administrative officer, the City Journal reported.

A series of unintended payouts stemming from judgments against the city in personal injury lawsuits brought Los Angeles to the brink.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and California Governor Gavin Newsom receiving briefing about the area damaged by the Palisades wildfire, with others present in a parking lot
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and California Governor Gavin Newsom received a briefing about the area damaged by the Palisades wildfire, with others present in a parking lot.

Firefighters Aren’t Allowed To Say This Truth In Public About Who Is Starting The Fires

I heard Adam Corolla talk about this last week. He lives there and knows what is going on. He’s not afraid to tell the truth either because he can’t be canceled.

Now this….

By now, we all know the left’s twisted environmental policies and DEI agenda are destroying the country from the inside out. But nowhere is that more evident these days than in California, where the state is literally burning to the ground thanks to both failed movements.

IT’S THE HOMELESS AND ILLEGALS WHO LIVE IN THE HILLS DOING DRUGS THAT START THE FIRES, NOT CLIMATE CHANGE

It’s plain as day that the left’s fire “management” is a colossal disaster. Los Angeles is literally ablaze and burning to the ground as we speak. But did you know there’s a deep, dark secret—one that’s the worst-kept secret among firefighters? They know all about it but are forbidden to speak up, fearing it’ll clash with the left’s plans. The truth is, many of these fires are caused by careless homeless people, and firefighters are fully aware of it. But according to local news outlets, they’re not allowed to admit it on air.

https://twitter.com/sunnyright/status/1877908559486222617?mx=2

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The Infamous Delta Smelt Fish Has Not Been Seen in Nearly a Decade – California Allowed Its Cities to Burn to the Ground Over a Fish That They Can’t Even Find Anymore

This is the fish that California justified ruining the water supply for farmers and firefighters years ago.

The tiny Delta Smelt fish have not been seen in the wild in California in over a decade.

And yet, California Democrats flushed annual water flow into the ocean to save this little fish that they can’t even find in its natural habitat.
Now several cities are burnt to the ground.

They sacrificed entire communities for a fish that doesn’t exist.

A 2021 report by Dan Bacher in the Sacramento News revealed that there have been NO DELTA SMELT seen in the wild since 2012.
They’re extinct.

For the seventh September in a row, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife has caught zero Delta smelt during its Fall Midwater Trawl Survey of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

The last time Delta smelt – an indicator species for the broader ecological health estuary – were found in CDFW’s September survey was in 2015. Only 5 were caught by state biologists at the time.

After that, the only year that Delta smelt were caught during the entire four-month survey was in 2016, when a total of 8 smelt were reported.

The final results of Fish and Wildlife’s four-month survey of pelagic (open water) fish species, conducted from September through mid-December, won’t be available until around the start of next year. The current September 2022 data is available here on the annual state surveys webpage.

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but let’s not let facts get in the way of politics

Why Los Angeles Is Burning

After years of fire and smoke in rural Northern California—evacuations, death and destruction, broken communities, lost homes—watching Los Angeles burn feels surreal but inevitable. This could have been avoided, but we knew it was coming.

For years, we have sounded the alarm to anyone who would listen. San Francisco and Los Angeles ignored us.

Now Los Angeles—one of the great cities on earth, a unique American gem—is in ashes.

For anyone who wants to understand how we got here, this is what happened.

California has not built a new major water reservoir since 1979.

The state’s last major reservoir project was completed in 1979, when the population was some 23 million. It’s been 50 years, there are now 39 million residents, and progress on the storied California Water Project has stopped.

In 2014, Californians voted overwhelmingly for Prop 1, funding a $7.5 billion bond to construct new water reservoirs and dams, with a deadline of January 1, 2022.

It’s now 2025, and no reservoirs have been built. Proposed projects remain mired in the bureaucratic morass of California politics.

There is no reason for California to experience water shortage. The natural climate is cyclical: years of low rainfall punctuated by years of extreme rain. Eleven months ago, at the start of 2024, we were enjoying several extra feet of snowpack in the Sierras and the most rain we’d had in 25 years. The reservoirs were overflowing.

Year after year, massive, swollen rivers in Northern California send water out to the Pacific Ocean, while government agencies scold citizens for watering their lawns.

The state is spending millions to REMOVE existing water infrastructure.

If failure to build new water projects for a growing state population weren’t bad enough, Gavin Newsom and his feckless administration is spending millions of taxpayer dollars to destroy existing water infrastructure in fire-prone Northern California.

The Klamath Dam was removed in 2023.

Scott Dam is next: a century-old dam system upon which some 600,000 people rely in agricultural communities stretching from Potter Valley to Bodega Bay.

The government wants to remove this dam, impoverishing the farm communities and rural residents who rely on it, to “improve salmon habitat.”

Photo credit USFS. Lake Pillsbury is a scenic reservoir created by Scott Dam, critical water infrastructure serving rural and ag communities and 600,000 users from Potter Valley to Bodega Bay. Gavin Newsom’s administration is set to remove this dam, which will run Lake Pillsbury dry.

Several lethal fires have hit this region in the past few years, including the Redwood Complex and Sonoma Complex fires in 2017, and the Mendocino Complex Fire in 2018. Removing their water is a cruel blow for a community still reeling from those disasters, leaving them defenseless when the next fire comes.

Water cuts to farmers and citizens over a 3-inch fish led to empty reservoirs.

Farms were run dry and pumps shut off to preserve the three-inch “Delta Smelt”

California is the leading agricultural state in the nation. But for years, politicians slashed water allotments and shut off ag pumps to farmers in an effort to save a finger-length, minnow-like fish called the Delta Smelt.

When President Trump took office, he said California should consider updating its water infrastructure so farmers could grow crops and cities didn’t have to burn to the ground over a minnow.

This enraged Democrat activists. Their righteous indignation fueled many think pieces about the Delta Smelt.

For all that spilled ink, the restoration efforts didn’t work. Outside hatcheries, the Delta Smelt are all but gone.

So are scores of farmers, their land run dry by politicians in Sacramento.

This approach is typical of the consistent preference displayed by California politicians for the perceived prosperity of any animal, species, or ecosystem over the welfare and survival of its citizens.

After years of anti-human water and land policy, neglecting critical infrastructure, when the fires started last night in Los Angeles, there was no water in the fire hydrants.

Removing grazing, control burns, and management left California an unnatural tinder box.

According to U.C. Berkeley rangeland science professor Lynn Huntsinger, cattle remove some 12 billion pounds of dry biomass from California’s grasslands and woodlands every year.

“Cattle are the largest fire prevention tool we have in the state,” she told me, “But people are largely unaware of it.”

Lynn Huntsinger, professor of rangeland ecology and management at UC Berkeley, calls cattle grazing California’s most valuable and important fire prevention tool.

Environmentalists blame cows for climate change. Beef cattle are responsible for less than 2% of all U.S. carbon emissions. Wildfire is responsible for between 15% and 30% of U.S. emissions—and that number appears to be getting worse.

Prescribed fires and forest management have also gone out of fashion. For centuries, Native tribes practiced control burning to manage the natural fire risk inherent to California’s ecosystem.

Rest of the story.

For the record, no one has seen a delta smelt in 10 years, but they were willing to kill 30,000 Salmon over it.

What Did $750,000 a Year Deliver At The Los Angeles Department Of Water And Power? Bud Light Competency At The Top

They might as well have Dylan Mulvaney drinking a beer with this girl. Get this. I’ve never seen a bigger waste of $750 K in my life…. so far.

The firestorm is still in progress in Los Angeles, priorities first and foremost are saving of lives and property.  The calamity in Los Angeles is still early in the situation, ongoing, and not yet under control, but some basic facts can be established at this point in time.

  • Janisse Quiñones PE (She/Her) is the CEO and Chief Engineer at Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP).
  • Janisse Quiñones was hired with a $750,000 Salary, nearly twice that of her predecessor.
  • LADWP operates ten major active reservoirs and over 107 smaller storage facilities, all of which create operational flexibility to balance water supplies and customer demands.
  • A key reservoir in the Pacific Palisades fire was inoperable.
  • Multiple locations of the service area that Quinones oversees are a raging inferno and short on water for firefighters.

Water for the LADWP Service Area comes from the following sources:

  • 73% is purchased water from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD) which is both an aqueduct to State Water Projects in upper California and the Colorado River Aqueduct.
  • 15% is water from the Los Angeles Aqueduct which is fed from water close to the Nevada Border.
  • 10% is local groundwater.
  • 2% is recycled water.

LADWP Strategic Initiatives reflect Religion of Woke-ism

Now that some of the basic facts are established, the reality is that one of the largest urban fires ever experienced in the U.S is in progress.  It looks like World War II-era firebombing in progress.  The severe water shortages, War on Dams, and ideological virtue signaling are well known in Governor Newsom’s California.  But Water and Power are essentially apolitical and based on science, fact, and best practices of civil engineering, correct?  A peek at the LADWP Strategic Initiatives refutes that luddite view.  Here are the four, strategic imperatives for LADWP:

  • Leading with Equity
  • Clean Energy Future
  • Resiliency and Reliability
  • Our Sustainable Water Future

What do these pithy titles mean?  They are abstract, street theater platitudes that disguise hard-core leftist retribution intended to collapse and destroy existing society.  People are dead and dying, and large swaths of Los Angeles are being destroyed because of this Religion of Woke-ism.  This Religion could not care less about facts, science, efficient delivery of public services, or reality. Earlier this year, Janisse appeared on a podcast with a title, “Why Equity is Key to Solving the Climate Emergency w/ DWP CEO & Chief Engineer Janisse Quinones.”  DEI hires are not focused on efficient delivery of effective services to all the Citizens.  Controlling these positions is another opportunity to weaponize government against the Citizen for angry retribution clothed in George Takai happy talk.

As Scott Adams has pointed out, “Having the wrong leaders with the wrong priorities gets you everything we are witnessing this week”.

Pervasive Public Service Corruption in Los Angeles and California

I’m all for highly paid Civil Servants. But, I believe in the Singapore Model, in which Civil Servants are highly paid, but in return are expected to perform with absolute fidelity, deliver outstanding results, and will be held to account for their performance.

And if they don’t meet these requirements, they get shown the door, or worse.  Quiñones has had a meteoric rise. Now there is a Biblical level disaster under her watch.  I’m not upset that Quiñones was able to negotiate such a healthy salary, but she should be held accountable, which also means a return of salary, fines, and possible prosecution.

If one has not been paying attention, the Los Angeles region, under a Blue monoculture, has been a cesspool of Public Sector Corruption for decades. Even the New York Times gets it right occasionally and says, “Prosecutors say that corruption is rising in California cities as one-party rule, inattentive voters and weakened news media have reduced the traditional checks on power”.  Chinese malign influence has been front and center in the pervasive corruption of California:

“A Chinese real estate company was fined $4 million and placed on five years probation (sic) Friday for bribing former Los Angeles City Councilman José Huizar with more than $1.5 million in cash, gambling trips and escorts in exchange for the then-councilman’s support of a planned downtown hotel project.

Although he was also charged, Shen Zhen New World I’s billionaire owner Wei Huang fled to China after the charges were announced and has never appeared in a Los Angeles courtroom in connection with the case.”

The DEI Cult brings equal misery, death, and destruction for all

Woke-ism and DEI are not about reconciliation, they are about retribution and intentional collapse of society – Marxist and Maoist core tenets.  Hosea 8:7 (KJV) is timeless in its guidance, “For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind”.

That’s exactly what is happening as Newsom was shifting into “Trump Proofing” California, whatever that meant.  The results of years of Blue, One Party is coming together in a cataclysm.  When everything is virtue signaling and the basics of math, planning, civil engineering, and agnostic, non-politicized science-based decision making is considered a manifestation of privileged culture, anything goes.  And when anything goes, anything goes and society collapses.

If Janisse Quiñones was able to negotiate a $750,000 salary, good on her.  But her focus has not been on the best delivery of services to the Citizens.  With her own words, she is focused on the wrong things.  Pay can be great for great leaders, but one has to take responsibility for the bad as well as the good.  $750,000 a year brought mediocrity and failure, and Janisse was the one holding the bag when the lights came on and exposed the corrupt nature of the Religion of Wokeness.  Time for her, and others in California, to pay up.

Los Angeles Fires, Why DEI And Woke Fail In Leadership

There have been 15,000 acres, 1,000 structures destroyed. Nobody knows how many people are killed or missing. And how do we characterize this? Everybody’s talking about the Santa Ana winds, climate change—I mean everybody, the people in power.

But it was preventable. And once it started, this fire, it could have been assuaged. You could have had it lessened, that the severity didn’t have to be as catastrophic. So, I would characterize it as a DEI–Green New Deal hydrogen bomb. It’s something out of “Dante’s Inferno.”

And what I mean by that is, it’s a systems breakdown, a civilizational collapse. When you look at the people in charge, [California Gov.] Gavin Newsom flew in, to sort of do these performance-art stunts, but he has systematically ensured that water out of the Sacramento River and the watershed of Northern California would go out to the sea, rather than into the aqueduct, so Los Angeles didn’t have sufficient amounts of water.

He bragged not very long ago that he blew up four dams on the Klamath River. They provided 80,000 homes with clean hydroelectric power. They offered recreation, flood control, irrigation. He blew them up.

California’s fire management, whether we look at the Paradise Fire or the Aspen Fire near where I’m speaking, it destroyed 60 million trees. We have no timber industry in California. [Newsom’s] dismantled it.

We don’t clean the forest. We don’t let loggers come in and have a viable livelihood by harvesting trees. It’s sort of considered natural to let these things burn or to at least create the conditions in which they will inevitably be burned.

It’s almost as if we don’t like humans. We worry about grubs and worms and birds and the ecosystem.

The second breakdown was the mayor, Karen Bass, was in Africa. You tell me why the mayor of the third-largest city in the United States at fire season, when she had been warned and warned for days on end that the Santa Ana winds were up to 100 miles an hour in the evening, and there was a danger of fire, and she goes off to Africa for the inauguration of the president of Ghana.

With all due respect, Mayor, but who cares? You have an obligation to the 6 million people of greater Los Angeles. And then we have the fire chief. I don’t really care that she’s LGBTQ, I don’t care [about] any of that. All I do care is her emphases. She’s been bragging for the last two years that her goal was to make sure [the Fire Department] was diverse and inclusive.

https://twitter.com/EndWokeness/status/1877558474483040630?mx=2

That can be good if it’s competent. But when you announce that 70% of your hiring will not be meritocratic, but will be based on diversity, equity, inclusion, then you’re not putting the interest of your constituents first.

There were not even enough, there wasn’t enough water pressure in Pacific Palisades. Pacific Palisades is not where I live. It’s one of the wealthiest, most exclusive neighborhoods in the United States. If they don’t have water, then no one’s going to get water, believe me.

There’s not enough insurance. There were famous actors that didn’t have insurance. Why? Because industry is overregulated, it’s fraught with people who make fraudulent claims, and the insurance industry knows that California is hostile to it, but more importantly that it will never clean up its forest or take preventive, time-tried, ancient protocols to lessen the dangers of fire.

And so put it all together, whether it’s a deliberate policy to not store water, not preserve water. Last year was one of the wettest years that we’ve had. We’ve had three out of the last four years have been very wet. We had a huge snowpack. We had rivers that were running in 19th-century fashion, but out to the sea to save the delta smelt.

So, it was a total systems collapse from the idea of not spending money on irrigation, storage, water, fire prevention, force management, a viable insurance industry, a DEI hierarchy. You put it all together and it’s something like a DEI-Green New Deal hydrogen bomb.

Gavin Newsom was fiddling, as he’s almost Nero Newsom. And this has been something that is just unimaginable, this system’s breakdown.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass are seen here Nov. 16, 2023, at a joint press conference. (Sarah Reingewirtz/ Media News Group/Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images)

And to finish, what we’re seeing in California is a state with 40 million people. And yet the people who run it feel that it should return to a 19th-century pastoral condition. They are decivilizing the state, and deindustrializing the state, and defarming the state, but they’re not telling the 40 million people that their lifestyles will have to revert back to the 19th century when you had no protection from fire, you didn’t have enough water in California, you didn’t have enough power, you didn’t pump oil.

So, we are deliberately making these decisions not to develop energy, not to develop a timber industry, not to protect the insurance industry, not to protect houses and property.

And we’re doing it in almost a purely nihilistic fashion. And Karen Bass should resign. She came to the airport, back from Africa. She had nothing to say. She was confronted at the airport: “Why were you in Africa? Why did you cut the fire department?”

They cut the fire department by almost $18 million. They gave fire protective equipment to Ukraine’s first responders, and she had nothing to say. She had nothing to say because she couldn’t say anything.

I don’t want to be too pessimistic or bleak tonight, but this is one of the most alarming symptoms of a society gone mad, and if this continues, and if this were to spread to other states, we would become a Third World country if we’re not in parts already.

what does she have to say for herself?

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Here Are All The Ways DEI-Crazed Officials Made The LA Fire More Deadly

As relentless fires burn in Los Angeles, thousands of residents who fled their homes are just learning how poorly public officials prepared for such an event. Emergency response leaders following bad public policy have been too focused on sending firefighting equipment to Ukraine, keeping the homeless safe, protecting fish, and adopting green policies to focus on things like making sure there is enough water to feed fire hydrants and guaranteeing that the strongest, best-trained, most-skilled firefighters are leading operations.

Officials seem to believe that when fire forces you to flee your home, there is just one thing on your mind: the skin color and cultural experience of the firefighters who will bring you to safety. Will they be diverse enough to rescue you? Never mind if they are the best for the job, are they anything but straight white men?

That has been a major priority of the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD), which, in 2022, launched its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Bureau (DEI), purportedly “focused on ensuring a safe, diverse and inclusive workplace for all.”

In January 2022, then-Mayor Eric Garcetti checked multiple DEI boxes by appointing Kristin Crowley as fire chief, the first female, LGBT chief in Los Angeles. That year, according to LAFD data, “of the more than 6,500 applicants to LAFD, 70% were people of color and nearly 8% … were female,” which was “double the … percentage of female firefighters within the Department” at the time.

The LAFD Girls Camp is one avenue for recruitment for female firefighters, hosting girls between 14 and 18 to explore career opportunities in the department.

More, much more incompetence documented here