THOUGHTS ON THE CALIFORNIA WILDFIRES

What really went wrong, who is responsible and other pertinent questions!

As a long time Meteorologist (35 years) I was able to see 3-4 days ahead of time that the dreaded Santa Anna winds would be coming and possibly a rather fierce wind event. Where were the people in charge, when the National Weather Service made this known to the LA leaders and the public?

Just for shits and giggles, the top 12 employees of the LA water department, last year made between 548K and 560K. Good work if you can get it. Especially if you're not held accountable when everything goes bad! I don’t know about you, but where were these people ahead of and during the fires?

Quite possibly they went to Ghana like Mayor Bass did. They could certainly afford that. That incompetent Mayor Bass had to know about the weather conditions before she left on her trip. And most importantly, she didn’t say a word or come home early from her trip. I guess seeing a new President of Ghana inaugurated was more important than worrying about the citizens of LA. (The peons) That word needs redefining as the real definition in LA should be: The citizens get peed on while the leaders party! Tell me I’m wrong!

And then there’s the water situation. It’s generally referred to as the Delta Smelt. A small fish that could be picked up and moved to a new area, instead, Governor Haircut (Newsom) and his Greenie Environmental wackos, decided that the fish was more important to California than the citizens. So because of the Smelt, not a single water storage facility has been built in years. Over the past few years, money was allocated to build water storage and controlled burns, but the money was spent on Illegal immigrants, homeless folks and other nonsense. The reason controlled burns have been banned is that they are more concerned about Bambi than the underbrush that caused these fires to spread so quickly and violently.

And then of course, there is the completely incompetent Mayor Bass who last year decided to cut more than 17 million dollars from the Fire Department budget. So what did they end up with? Literally hundreds of fire hydrants that didn’t work because there was no water in them. Firefighters are telling stories of trying to save neighborhoods, only to get there and find fire hoses lying flat on the ground for lack of water. What a disgrace?

Back to Governor Haircut for a moment. I can only surmise he spent the first 72 hours of the crisis at the famous French Laundry Restaurant as he, also, was silent as well. And when he did speak up, he passed off responsibility to the local officials. Can you say disgraceful as well?

My real concerns now are what happens in the future:

• What happens to all the people who can’t afford to rebuild…

• What do the people think when they try to get permits from LA

and they find out the permitting process takes more than a year…

• What are they going to say when they find out insurance will cost

more than their mortgages…

• What are they going to say when their leaders put out a mealy mouth

statement 6 months from now, taking no responsibility…

A couple of thoughts for California voters for the future:

• Instead of voting D or R, how about you hire competent leaders…

• How about you question the competency of your leaders to see

if they actually know how to manage something…

• Maybe someday, you will figure out that Smelt fish and Bambi are

not quite as important as your safety and your homes…

Finally, I feel terrible for all the 10s of thousands of people affected by this entirely preventable tragedy. There is an old saying I’ve thought about recently, “that you get what you vote for.” Sadly the citizens of the LA area got exactly what they voted for. Best of luck to all of you in the future!

Sunny