"Start with its environmental obsessions. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power in 2019 sought to widen a fire-access road and replace old wooden utility poles in the Topanga Canyon abutting the Palisades with steel ones to make power lines fire- and wind-resistant. In the process, crews removed an estimated 182 Braunton’s milkvetch plants, an endangered species.
The utility halted the project as state officials investigated the plant destruction. More than a year later, the California Coastal Commission issued a cease-and-desist order, fined the utility $2 million, and required “mitigation” for the project’s impact on the species.
Since the milkvetch requires wildfires to propagate, the only way to boost its numbers is to let the land burn."
"Consider the state’s response to crime and homelessness, which may have contributed to the fires. Last year’s Park Fire—the fourth largest in state history—was allegedly ignited by a man with two prior felony convictions who was on parole for a DUI. The Los Angeles Times reported in early 2021 that 24 fires on average were breaking out each day in the city’s homeless encampments. A fire in an encampment shut down an L.A. freeway last November, the second time that had happened in a little over a year.
Good Samaritans on Thursday detained a homeless man who they said used a flamethrower to incinerate Christmas trees and garbage cans, around the same time as a major fire erupted. Police arrested the vagrant on a felony probation violation—meaning he had been on parole for another felony—because they said they lacked probable cause to charge him with arson. The suspect reportedly claimed he was using a blowtorch to smoke marijuana."
It is sad that part of a state's response to a disaster has to include defensive propaganda[1] in order to justify federal aid to impacted residents. What should be a no-brainer has now turned into a PR battle.
[1] "information that is spread for the purpose of promoting some cause", per Kagi. Not all propaganda is bad.
It’s very sad that otherwise unrelated parties are incentivized to spread misinformation as part of some broader political strategy with no concern for the truth or livelihood of their fellow citizens.
> It’s very sad that otherwise unrelated parties are incentivized to spread misinformation...
Two parties scrutinizing each other is the reason the US is the closest we've got to democracy in centuries. Look at other countries that are mainly one-party states and see how they're doing.
I mean there's a difference between scrutinizing the emergency response and spreading the notion that the fire was intentional and deliberate. This is a rather large part of the information being spread.
I mean, I have no skin in The game, am not an American, have no idea what are Newsoms politics or capabilities and most of the things I see being told online are crazy weird speculations.
I was mainly exposed to:
1. Fire marshal is bad because is a lesbian
2. Fires are deliberate to advance 'smart cities'
3. Fires were spread in order to get rid of evidence pertaining to a pedophile ring.
So take it from a bystander, this doesn't look like a healthy democratic discourse.
GP is not criticizing a two party system. GP is criticizing spreading misinformation. Having two parties that honestly find faults and propose fixes would be great.
Scrutinizing is one thing, spreading deliberate misinformation is another.
Think about the asymmetry here — if there were a single fact wrong on that page Newsom released, he would be criticized and castigated and he’d have to correct it and apologize. All the people that he highlights spreading misinformation, are any of them going to apologize or correct the mistake? Of course not.
> It is sad that part of a state's response to a disaster has to include defensive propaganda[1]...
Funny how tables have turned. Once upon a time, the right had to do the same because Facebook/IG/Twitter/etc. were pushing for and allowing leftist propaganda.
So the take away is that we had all the resources we needed, lots of money for firefighters and plenty of water in reservoirs. So either the situation is impossible and no plausible human effort could have saved these neighborhoods, or these resources were mismanaged and the planning was incompetent.
Does anyone know what the issue is? Is it the lack of sufficient controlled burns and forest thinning, leaving so much fuel that these fires become impossible to contain? $3.8B seems like plenty of money? Maybe it isn't?
If the answer from govt officials is to yell "climate change!" and then disappear in a puff of smoke well I think that's going to have a substantial effect on Southern CA property values.
(1). Like anything else in 21st century western world, decision making structures are beaurocratic to the point that 10 people need to get paid to get a new highway department truck ordered, another 5 need to sign off on firefighting equipment to be loaded on to it. not built or delivered or driven, ordered. This is the case in every state, either due to politics or due to cost protection policies.
(When it's then time to hire a driver, demands 110k a year minimum in most US states. And most of the time, their job isn't driving that firefighting equipped truck, it's sitting at the office.)
In this Firefighting scenario..... wildland firefighting can and does pay less than most fast food jobs on the coasts. Why is this the way it is?
We have as a society made wildland fire so taboo that it seems folly in most US states to employ a huge wildland firefighting department as a matter of the forestry department. And hey, most of the time it's "unskilled" and low stress!
(That is, until the fire comes and exponentially increases and destroys the most valuable land in america.)
Very hard to call in 10k emergency firefighters when the base pay is 16 dollars an hour in California.
(2). Air power in particular here is abysmal. I reguarly am tracking on flight tracking apps and acros this whole event haven't seen more than 10 copters across LA county and surrounding fighting the fires at the same time. That is unnaceptable in the most powerful, richest country in the history of the universe.
I understand that the SA winds prevent fixed wing aircraft from dropping fire retardant, but I am absolutley flabbergasted how the military and CALFIRE did not have dozens of rotary craft on rotation providing evac and water drops.
It seems that this aims to refutes claims for inaction with facts about spending money.
However, the high speed rail project or homelessness management seem to show that in California, $$$ spent doesn't always imply that the problem is actually tackled in a meaningful way.
Why not put out the fires first? Imaging being a first responder hearing this political nonsense takes precedence over your safety. The fires are here. They need to be dealt with.
They did the same thing during the hurricane in North Carolina. "FEMA is giving funds to illegals!!!".
The lack of any sort of fact checking and relying on community notes to do fact checking is just inherently flawed and works in favor of the disinformation artists. It's going to get worse.
I think hearing the facts from a governor who's responsible for the fires isn't the brightest idea. A better source would have been third parties or even some opposition party that scrutinized what Gavin has done in this state.
I feel similar levels of cognitive dissonance when a Floridian governor claims he cannot simply stop a hurricane. What the hell do we even have politicians for if they can’t change the weather!? Have we considered the use of nuclear weapons on the fire? Dear leader trump had a great idea on dat last time there was danger cuming for Florida.
It's possible to have a useful debate about whether California's fire preparedness and response is what it should be. That's not what's happening here. What's happening here is some tweet from an account with 25.4 million followers says California has cut specific budgets, but the actual budgets say otherwise. Some tweet from an account with 4.7 million followers says 60 Oregonian fire trucks are held up in Sacramento for emissions testing, but they were already in Los Angeles and never went through emissions testing.
"Start with its environmental obsessions. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power in 2019 sought to widen a fire-access road and replace old wooden utility poles in the Topanga Canyon abutting the Palisades with steel ones to make power lines fire- and wind-resistant. In the process, crews removed an estimated 182 Braunton’s milkvetch plants, an endangered species.
The utility halted the project as state officials investigated the plant destruction. More than a year later, the California Coastal Commission issued a cease-and-desist order, fined the utility $2 million, and required “mitigation” for the project’s impact on the species.
Since the milkvetch requires wildfires to propagate, the only way to boost its numbers is to let the land burn."
"Consider the state’s response to crime and homelessness, which may have contributed to the fires. Last year’s Park Fire—the fourth largest in state history—was allegedly ignited by a man with two prior felony convictions who was on parole for a DUI. The Los Angeles Times reported in early 2021 that 24 fires on average were breaking out each day in the city’s homeless encampments. A fire in an encampment shut down an L.A. freeway last November, the second time that had happened in a little over a year.
Good Samaritans on Thursday detained a homeless man who they said used a flamethrower to incinerate Christmas trees and garbage cans, around the same time as a major fire erupted. Police arrested the vagrant on a felony probation violation—meaning he had been on parole for another felony—because they said they lacked probable cause to charge him with arson. The suspect reportedly claimed he was using a blowtorch to smoke marijuana."
[1] "information that is spread for the purpose of promoting some cause", per Kagi. Not all propaganda is bad.
There's narratives and there's reality, they don't always match 1-1 and often times people only care about the story.
Two parties scrutinizing each other is the reason the US is the closest we've got to democracy in centuries. Look at other countries that are mainly one-party states and see how they're doing.
I mean, I have no skin in The game, am not an American, have no idea what are Newsoms politics or capabilities and most of the things I see being told online are crazy weird speculations.
I was mainly exposed to: 1. Fire marshal is bad because is a lesbian 2. Fires are deliberate to advance 'smart cities' 3. Fires were spread in order to get rid of evidence pertaining to a pedophile ring.
So take it from a bystander, this doesn't look like a healthy democratic discourse.
Think about the asymmetry here — if there were a single fact wrong on that page Newsom released, he would be criticized and castigated and he’d have to correct it and apologize. All the people that he highlights spreading misinformation, are any of them going to apologize or correct the mistake? Of course not.
Funny how tables have turned. Once upon a time, the right had to do the same because Facebook/IG/Twitter/etc. were pushing for and allowing leftist propaganda.
Does anyone know what the issue is? Is it the lack of sufficient controlled burns and forest thinning, leaving so much fuel that these fires become impossible to contain? $3.8B seems like plenty of money? Maybe it isn't?
If the answer from govt officials is to yell "climate change!" and then disappear in a puff of smoke well I think that's going to have a substantial effect on Southern CA property values.
(1). Like anything else in 21st century western world, decision making structures are beaurocratic to the point that 10 people need to get paid to get a new highway department truck ordered, another 5 need to sign off on firefighting equipment to be loaded on to it. not built or delivered or driven, ordered. This is the case in every state, either due to politics or due to cost protection policies.
(When it's then time to hire a driver, demands 110k a year minimum in most US states. And most of the time, their job isn't driving that firefighting equipped truck, it's sitting at the office.)
In this Firefighting scenario..... wildland firefighting can and does pay less than most fast food jobs on the coasts. Why is this the way it is?
We have as a society made wildland fire so taboo that it seems folly in most US states to employ a huge wildland firefighting department as a matter of the forestry department. And hey, most of the time it's "unskilled" and low stress!
(That is, until the fire comes and exponentially increases and destroys the most valuable land in america.)
Very hard to call in 10k emergency firefighters when the base pay is 16 dollars an hour in California.
(2). Air power in particular here is abysmal. I reguarly am tracking on flight tracking apps and acros this whole event haven't seen more than 10 copters across LA county and surrounding fighting the fires at the same time. That is unnaceptable in the most powerful, richest country in the history of the universe.
I understand that the SA winds prevent fixed wing aircraft from dropping fire retardant, but I am absolutley flabbergasted how the military and CALFIRE did not have dozens of rotary craft on rotation providing evac and water drops.
Yes. That seems reasonable
https://www.npr.org/2025/01/12/g-s1-42393/la-fires-los-angel...
The lack of any sort of fact checking and relying on community notes to do fact checking is just inherently flawed and works in favor of the disinformation artists. It's going to get worse.
It's wild how much credit and blame we assign to government officials.
For instance: Many Americans essentially believe that the president has a lever in their office to adjust the price of gas up and down
And the opposition is spreading lies.
Seriously tho, "A governor is stating what’s going on." is not the same as him telling facts.