California Gov. Gavin Newsom marked six months since the Palisades and Eaton Fires on January 7 by holding a press event in Pasadena that started late — like much else related to the rebuilding effort.
Generally, cleanup work by federal government agencies — hazardous waste removal by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the debris removal by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — has been ahead of schedule.
Most of what state and local governments have been responsible for doing, however, has been late.
Newsom boasted that the debris removal process has been “the fastest … in modern history.” He did not mention that debris removal has been entirely handled by federal and private contractors — not the state.
He did note that the Trump administration had “honored” the commitment to a rebuilding effort that he credited the outgoing Biden administration for launching.
However, Newsom spent most of his time congratulating state and local leaders for their work thus far, taking a victory lap ahead of his visit to rural counties in South Carolina this week, where he intends to test the waters for a potential presidential run in 2028.
There were several factors contributing to the disaster, few of which have been addressed:
- Lack of water: The reservoir atop the Palisades was empty due to repairs to a cover that was, in turn, mandated by federal environmental regulations. It has since been repaired and refilled. But nothing has yet been done to address the lack of water supply or pressure in the system during extremely high demand, which is a design flaw that appeared during the Eaton Fire as well as the Palisades Fire.
- Lack of insurance: The California Insurance Commissioner, Brian Lara, recently announced an investigation into State Farm. But nothing has been done since the fire to change the underlying problems with a system that discourages insurers from offering coverage for fires — nor to compensate residents who lost their insurance before the fire and were dumped onto the weak California FAIR Plan.
- Rebuilding: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is moving quickly to remove residential debris, and is set to finish in August — almost a year ahead of schedule. But the L.A. City Council has moved slowly to deliver on Mayor Karen Bass’s promise to waive permit fees for rebuilding, and the local bureaucracy is overwhelmed. Some schools have built temporary facilities; a new Palisades playground has been built.
- Firefighting: Bass fired L.A. Fire Chief Kristin Crowley over her decision not to deploy firefighters ahead of the anticipated extreme wind event of January 7. But while Crowley made the wrong decision, she was also restricted in her ability to pay overtime because of budget cuts that Bass proposed. The city spent more on the homeless than on firefighting due to state and local leaders’ failures on that issue.
- Policing: Nothing has been done to address the shortage of police officers that contributed to a near-disastrous evacuastion from Pacific Palisades during the fire. Instead, the mayor and the governor have both undermined respect for law enforcement by fighting the president’s efforts to suppress riots in Los Angeles, putting their own political self-interest, in terms of Democratic Party politics, ahead of safety.
Newsom acknowledged that “more work” needed to be done on permitting, and on “public infrastructure.” He also noted that work needed to be done on the “insurance market.” He offered no solutions, however.
Mayor Karen Bass did not attend, according to an official, “due to an emerging event,” which was not named.
The “emerging event” was a federal immigration raid in L.A., which she tried to stop, in a publicity stunt.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
Photo: file