☆ Opinion: It’s not just L.A.; CA desperately needs a smarter fire management plan
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In this Opp Now exclusive on the recent Los Angeles wildfires, political analyst Denise P. Kalm argues that we need solid answers—and major changes—on California's fire management practices to avert future disasters.
It isn’t just LA. We need to remember that in a desert state, many areas are at risk for wildfires. We may have been lucky to have been spared so far, though much of the hills in Oakland and Berkeley were destroyed as recently as 1991. Hot servers and the overloaded electrical grid to support AI can also be an issue in Silicon Valley. What is suggested here should be applied to all areas of very high and high risk in California.
What Went Wrong in California?
California politicians and “experts” have made a variety of bad decisions that allowed the deadly, destructive fires to rage in Los Angeles. Here are the main contributors, all of which could have been addressed years earlier, and must be fixed now.
Failure to Prioritize Prevention — We used to do controlled burns in the state, which mimics the natural order in forests. Forests burn regularly, refreshing the environment and leading to healthier growth. By managing the burns ourselves, we can prevent fires from occurring at less-optimal times and then getting out of hand. We’ve moved from being strongly proactive in preventing fires to focusing more on suppression. Interestingly, Mexico suffered the same issues 20 years ago—dry, desert-like climate; not enough water; and the like; but they implemented the prevention measures outlined here. Prevention means:
a. Regular controlled burns and clearing, where needed.
b. Allowing utility companies to crop trees and other plants to keep them away from power lines. Undergrounding of the lines is better, but it is costly and takes time.
c. Outreach to ensure that every community watches for overgrowth, dead foliage and other fuel for fires. By engaging everyone in fire prevention, you make fires less deadly. We Boomers learned about Smokey Bear—it is everyone’s responsibility to put out fires, have defensible space around property and the like.
d. Limiting people from building into areas that increase their fire risk. We may need more building, but we also need to look at where we build.
e. Exploiting cattle grazing. 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 reported, “But people are largely unaware of it.”
f. Ceasing to ignore California’s natural ecosystem and double down on planting that doesn’t work here (e.g., eucalyptus trees and dense undergrowth). Most trees are planted too densely.
g. Return the focus to using prudent logging and planting, ensuring healthy forests with reasonable density, which makes them safer.
Destroying Our Water Supply — Our mismanagement of water supplies (a surplus in 2024) has caused fire districts to run out of water, people unable to do what they want to with their property, and untold economic hardship.
a. Keep up with population growth by increasing water storage and building desalinization installations. We’ve not done enough to increase our water supply over the past many years, while our population (and demand) has grown. The last reservoir project was completed in 1979, when we had only 23 million people in CA. Now, we have 39 million. In 2014, we voted for Proposition 1, which was to fund a $7.5BB bond to construct new reservoirs and dams, to be completed in 2022. Instead, misguided governors and our legislature have been spending millions to decrease the supply by:
i. Reducing the number of dams.
ii. Failing to keep up with maintenance on reservoirs and other storage facilities.
iii. Failing to take advantage of rainy years (yes, we have them) to store even more.
iv. Incentivizing farmers to give up planting that requires excessive water (almonds, rice, etc.).
v. Sending billions of gallons of fresh water out to the ocean in a pointless attempt to protect the Delta smelt, a fish that hasn’t been seen in the wild since 2012. While we may hate the loss of a species, it is inevitable.
vi. Refusing to permit desalination plants. The Coastal Commission rejected a plant at Huntington Beach; if we had several of these, it would help us weather dry years.
Cutting Budgets for Fire Prevention and Response
a. Just a few months ago, LA Mayor Karen Bass slashed the fire budget by $17.6MM (as well as cutting down on sanitation and street service).
b. The uncomfortable reality is that homeless people often start fires. In 2023, there were 13,909 fires started by the homeless in LA alone. The state spent $24BB over the past five years to “combat homelessness,” without any accountability. That money could be better used to protect the taxpaying citizens, especially as some of the fires have been attributed to homeless encampments.
c. We must listen to the firefighters. They know what they need to put fires out, and more importantly, they have a good idea of how to prevent fires. We’ve got good people, though we may need substantially more of them. But perhaps prevention can cut the need for firefighting, which would be a savings for all of us.
d. Our state government seems to have its priorities out of whack. Basic needs in California include water, power, and fire safety. Where you put your money determines the results. Los Angeles is the result of poor choices and priorities.
e. State politicians take a lot of money from agencies like PG&E and Southern Edison, which has undue influence on policy.
Next Steps
By looking at what went wrong, we can chart a plan to fix it, though it will require a lot of time, money (which we can get by reprioritizing spending accordingly) and political will, which we may not see from our current leadership. As noted above, we need to be sure we have an adequate water supply for our citizens and farmers, but also to abate fires. We need to go back to a prevention mindset that all citizens subscribe to, getting ahead of fire danger. We must fund our fire efforts properly, to give them the resources to prevent and fight fires, instead of cutting them when the risk is high. If we can focus on this and make needed improvements, fires will be reduced, homes and lives will be saved, and Californians will again be able to buy home insurance. Is it so hard to do what’s right?
Denise P. Kalm's biweekly blog, Right on the Left Coast, highlights political issues of interest.
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