How Woke Policies Destroyed Lives in the Los Angeles Fires

Excerpt from Richard Panzer's upcoming book, GENESIS 1:28 CIVILIZATION & Its Enemies

The Palisades Fire of January 2025, the most devastating ever in California history, incinerated more than 23,700 acres in the community of Pacific Palisades. The Eaton fire, located in the area of Pasadena and Altadena, burned 14,000 acres. Other fires burned hundreds of acres near San Fernando, Antelope Valley and Hollywood Hills. By January 16, combined the fires covered more than 40,000 acres or 62 square miles,[1] three times the size of Manhattan Island.

The fires led to the mandatory evacuation of 105,000 people with 75,000 more warned to evacuate and the destruction/damage of over 12,300 buildings (mainly homes). As of January 16, 2025, 26 lives were lost. Early cost estimates of the wildfires in Southern California were $135 billion to $150 billion—more than the damage from any hurricane to hit the U.S. except Katrina.[2]

As explained by Doug Specht at Prevention Web, a cycle of wet winters leading to increased vegetation growth provided more fuel for fires, followed by a drop in rainfall that created dry conditions which made the area highly vulnerable to fire. In the end he blamed these intense climate cycles on the catch-all phrase, “climate change.”

As pointed out by journalists Adam Lehrer and Park MacDougald, a decade of fires have been steadily escalating in intensity, but the state and the city did “absolutely nothing…If you look at the history of these fires, there has been a very big major fire every two to three years. There are frontline things you do—preplanned fire breaks, water dumps, offshore fireboats to restore pressure using seawater—if you were to want to protect your neighborhood or state. There are also midrange things you do, like thinning forest, removing underbrush, having flex capacities for firefighters. In other words, you plan to meet a danger that in a probabilistic universe will happen even though no one can put a date on when.”

Another detail is that hydrants were missing all over the city because people have been stealing those for years. “Between January 2023 and May 2024, more than 300 fire hydrants were stolen from LA County streets, according to data from the Golden State Water Company, which manages the fire hydrants.”[3]

Several individuals were arrested for setting fires, including an illegal immigrant who was arrested with a “flamethrower.” He was tackled and zip-tied by onlookers. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency placed a detainer request on him on January 10, 2025, but the federal agency did not expect it to be honored due to California’s sanctuary state law.[4]

The New York Times points to the history of fires caused by electric sparks from old and ill-maintained power lines, many built 7-10 decades ago.[5] In recent decades the Pacific Gas and Electric company has focused on building “clean energy” from “renewable” sources rather than the less “greenly glamorous” repairing and upgrading of power lines.

In 2019 the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power began to actively replace 824 old wooden power poles in high fire risk zones in L.A. County with newer steel poles.[6] The LADWP began to grade fire roads in Topanga State Park to replace 220 wooden power poles north of Will Rogers State Beach. But then a lone hiker notified the utility company that 183 out of 2,000 Braunton’s milkvetch plants, listed as an endangered plant under the federal Endangered Species Act, had been damaged by the utility crews. The California Coastal Commission issued a cease-and-desist order on the work to replace utility poles and to build fire roads, along with a $2 million fine.[7]

The National Weather Service began warning of potentially strong winds and “extreme fire conditions,” two days before Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass left for Ghana on January 4.[8] On January 7, as the Los Angeles Fire Department faced extraordinary warnings of life-threatening winds, top commanders decided not to assign for emergency deployment roughly 1,000 available firefighters and dozens of water-carrying engines. Fire officials chose not to order the firefighters to remain on duty for a second shift as the winds were building — which would have doubled the personnel on hand — and staffed just five of more than 40 engines that are available to aid in battling wildfires.[9] Then a fire broke out in the Topanga State Park area of Los Angeles County, which quickly spread to thousands of acres, consuming thousands of structures along the way, and displacing entire communities.[10]

Unfortunately, the Santa Ynez Reservoir, which is located in the Pacific Palisades, was closed. It was emptied of 117 million gallons of water, which would have been extremely useful when numerous fire hydrants in higher-elevation streets of the Palisades went dry while firefighters were combating the flames. Emptying of the reservoir began in February, 2024 after a tear in the floating cover allowed debris and bird droppings to enter the water supply. Gus Corona, business manager of IBEW Local 18 commented: “This work should have been done in-house, and they shouldn’t have depended on a contractor to do it,” he said. “I truly believe it’s something that could have been avoided.”[1]

How could these missteps happen? Many point to L.A. Fire Department budget cuts. Crowley said that a $7 million reduction in overtime hours "severely limited the Department's capacity to prepare for, train for, and respond to large-scale emergencies" and affected their capacity for brush clearance inspections and residential inspections.

In 2014, California voters approved a $7.5 billion bond issue to build water storage and improve water facilities, but in the decade that followed not one dam had been finished.[11] Then, there’s the issue of the survival of the delta smelt, average size 2 inches and weighing 10 grams, that environmentalists employ to block any water releases in Central and Southern California. In an effort to save freshwater minnows like the Delta smelt, approximately 437 million gallons are dumped into the Pacific Ocean each day, rather being captured for human use.

According to a 2022 report, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife had not found any of the Delta smelt during its annual survey of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta…for seven years in a row.[12]

While California made efforts to protect an endangered fish, the Los Angeles Fire Department made investments in promoting diversity. The Department has an “equity” bureau to “advance DEI within the fire service.” In 2024, LAFD cut $7 million from the overtime budget, impacting air operations and disaster response, but kept the DEI department.[13]

In a video defending the department’s DEI hiring practices, Deputy Chief Kristine Larson — who heads the Equity and Human Resources Bureau — addressed accusations that female firefighters aren’t strong enough to carry a man out of a burning building. Her response: “He got himself in the wrong place if I have to carry him out of a fire.”[14] So if you’re a large man or woman imperiled by a fire, you’re on your own.

Nearly 4 decades ago, in 1988, California voters passed Proposition 103, arbitrarily reducing home insurance rates by 20 percent and subjecting future rate increases to public oversight. The politicization of risk had unforeseen consequences. Artificially low premiums encouraged more Californians to live in the state’s most dangerous areas and reduced the incentive for homeowners to protect their houses, such as by installing fire-resistant roofs and siding materials.

Environmentalists have litigated and lobbied for decades to stop efforts to thin combustible forests through timber harvesting, underbrush removal and controlled burns. According to the California Policy Center:

Fire suppression along with too many environmentalist-inspired bureaucratic barriers to controlled burns and undergrowth removal turned the hillsides and canyons of Southern California into tinderboxes.[15]

As explained by author Nolan Gray,[16] decades of increased fire risk along with suppressed premiums prompted many insurers to drop coverage. In the summer of 2024, State Farm dropped 1,600 home-insurance plans in the Pacific Palisades, where most of the neighborhood burned in January, 2025. Many Californians in high-risk areas have been forced to depend on the California FAIR Plan—the public insurer of last resort. In 2024, the plan covered $457 billion in home value. Within the next few years, California taxpayers could be on the hook for more than a trillion dollars.

Artificially low premiums also spurred new housing production in fire-prone regions on the edges of cities like Los Angeles. From 1990 to 2020, California built nearly 1.5 million homes in the wildland-urban interface, putting millions of residents in the path of wildfires.[17]

So, that is how a smorgasbord of woke agendas including saving a 2 inch fish that hasn’t been seen in 7 years; promoting DEI firefighters who may have limited ability to fight fires or save lives, while cutting the overtime budget used for air operations and disaster response; investing in solar and wind power instead of fixing ancient power lines; failure to arrest thieves when they steal fire hydrants; failure to deport homeless, illegal, fire-setting immigrants; and state regulation of insurance premiums because greedy corporations can never be trusted… led to a lack of sound fire prevention and forest management, to a failure to retain billions of gallons of water for human use, to building homes in dangerous, fire-prone areas, culminating in the second worst natural disaster in American history. But don’t worry, we can just blame it ALL on “climate change.”

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[1]

https://www.fire.ca.gov/

[2] David Brennan and Alex Presha, “Los Angeles residents face cost of devastating wildfires: 'I'm in shock',” ABC News, January 13, 2025.

[3] Kevin Tidmarsh, “What's Behind The Rise Of Fire Hydrant Thefts In South LA County?” LAist, June 8, 2024.

[4] Jennie Taer and Patrick Reilly, “Suspect arrested with ‘flamethrower’ near LA Fire is an illegal immigrant: sources,” New York Post, January 13, 2025.

[5] Jeremy White, “Many of California’s Most Destructive Fires Were Caused by Power Lines,” New York Times, January 13, 2025.

[6] Dakota Smith, “Aging DWP equipment is a risk for sparking wildfires, L.A. city controller warns,” Los Angeles Times, November 21, 2019.

[7] Nathan Solis, “LA to Pay $1.9 Million for Utility Crew Damage to Endangered Plants,” Courthouse News Service, November 4, 2020.

[8] David Zahniser and Matt Hamilton, “Karen Bass left L.A. for Africa as wind, fire warnings increased. She returned to a burning city,” Los Angeles Times, January 8, 2025.

[9] Paul Pringle, Alene Tchekmedyian and Dakota Smith, “L.A. fire officials could have put engines in the Palisades before the fire broke out. They didn’t,” Los Angeles Times, January 14, 2025.

[10] Andrew Schroeder, “Which Health Facilities Have Been Impacted by L.A.-Area Fires? AI May Paint a Clearer Picture,” Direct Relief, January 14, 2025.

[11] George Skelton, “Have no Prop. 1 water projects been built in California? No, but they are moving slowly,” Los Angeles Times, January 19, 2023.

[12] “Is California burning over a fish that hasn’t been seen in more than a decade?” WorldTribune, June 12, 2025.

[13] https://x.com/realchrisrufo/status/1877407982549455199.

[14] Jared Downing, “LAFD’s $300K-per-year diversity chief sparks fury for defending DEI by blaming the victim: ‘He got himself in the wrong place’,” New York Post, January 12, 2025.

[15] Edward Ring, “Environmentalists Destroyed California’s Forests,” California Policy Center, September 10, 2020.

[16] M. Nolan Gray, “How Well-Intentioned Policies Fueled L.A.’s Fires,” The Atlantic, January 11, 2025.

[17] Ryan Bourne and Sophia Bagley, “California Insurance Market: Another Victim of the War on Prices,” CATO Institute, January 10, 2025.