WASHINGTON: As cataclysmic wildfires rage across Los Angeles, President-elect Donald Trump hasn\u2019t been offering much sympathy. Instead, he\u2019s claiming he could do a better job managing the crisis, spewing falsehoods and casting blame on the state\u2019s Democratic governor.
\nTrump has lashed out at his longtime political foe Gov. Gavin Newsom\u2019s forest management policies and falsely claimed the state\u2019s fish conservation efforts are responsible for fire hydrants running dry in urban areas. Referring to the governor by a derisive nickname, Trump said he should resign.
\nMeanwhile, more than 180,000 people were under evacuation orders and the fires have consumed more than 45 square miles (116 square kilometers). One that destroyed the neighborhood of Pacific Palisades became the most destructive blaze in Los Angeles history.
\nTrump v. Newsom: Round 2 was to be expected \u2014 the liberal Democrat has long been one of Trump\u2019s biggest foils. But the Western fires are also a sign of something far more grave than a political spat or a fight over fish. Wildfire season is growing ever longer thanks to increasing drought and heat brought on by climate change.
\nTrump refuses to recognize the environmental dangers, instead blaming increasing natural disasters on his political opponents or on acts of God. He has promised to drill for more oil and cut back on renewable energy.
\nOn Thursday, Trump said on social media that Newsom should \u201copen up the water main\u201d \u2014 an overly simplistic solution to a complex problem. \u201cNO MORE EXCUSES FROM THIS INCOMPETENT GOVERNOR,\u201d Trump said, adding, \u201cIT\u2019S ALREADY FAR TOO LATE!\u201d
\nStanding on the street in a scorched subdivision as a home behind him was engulfed in flames, Newsom responded to the criticism when asked about it by CNN.
\n\u201cPeople are literally fleeing. People have lost their lives. Kids lost their schools. Families completely torn asunder. Churches burned down, and this guy wants to politicize it,\u201d Newsom said. \u201cI have a lot of thoughts and I know what I want to say, but I won\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a post on his Truth Social media network, Trump tried to connect dry hydrants to criticism of the state\u2019s approach to balancing the distribution of water to farms and cities with the need to protect endangered species, including the Delta smelt. Trump has sided with farmers over environmentalists in a long-running dispute over California\u2019s scarce water resources. But that debate has nothing to do with the hydrant issue in Los Angeles, driven by an intense demand on a municipal system not designed to battle such blazes.
\nTrump hosted Republican governors at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida on Thursday night and suggested that, upon taking office, he\u2019d pressure California into changing its water policies.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re gonna force that upon him now,\u201d the president-elect said of Newsom. \u201cBut it\u2019s very late because I think it\u2019s one of the great catastrophes in the history of our nation.\u201d
\nAbout 40 percent of Los Angeles city water comes from state-controlled projects connected to northern California and the state has limited the water it delivers this year. But the southern California reservoirs these canals help feed are at above-average levels for this time of year.
\nRoughly 20 percent of hydrants across the city went dry as crews battled blazes, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said. Firefighters in Southern California are accustomed to dealing with the strong Santa Ana winds that blow in the fall and winter, but the hurricane-force gusts earlier in the week took them by surprise. The winds grounded firefighting aircraft that should have been making critical water drops, straining the hydrant system.
\n\u201cThis is unlike anything I\u2019ve seen in my 25 years on the fire department,\u201d Los Angeles Fire Capt. Adam VanGerpen told CBS This Morning.
\nJanisse Qui\u00f1ones, head of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said the ferocity of the fire made the demand for water four times greater than \u201cwe\u2019ve ever seen in the system.\u201d
\nHydrants are designed for fighting fires at one or two houses at a time, not hundreds, Qui\u00f1ones said, and refilling the tanks also requires asking fire departments to pause firefighting efforts.
\nPresident Joe Biden, who was in California for an environmental event that ended up being canceled as the fires raged, appeared with Newsom at a Santa Monica firehouse on Wednesday. On Thursday, without naming Trump, he explained in a briefing how the hydrants had ended up dry, saying he was seeking to debunk rumors in \u201csimple straightforward language.\u201d In crisis, he said, \u201crumors and fear spread very quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is in case you haven\u2019t noticed, there is global warming,\u201d Biden said, adding \u201cit\u2019s not about the politics, it\u2019s about getting people some sense of security.\u201d
\n\u201cClimate change is real,\u201d he said emphatically.
\nBiden also quickly issued a major disaster declaration for California, releasing some immediate federal funds, and approved 100 percent federal funding for 180 days.
\nAt the Mar-a-Lago meeting, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis \u2014 Trump\u2019s rival in last year\u2019s GOP presidential primary \u2014 defended the president-elect as being willing to work with red states and blue states in emergencies. He also blamed the media for unnecessarily promoting controversy and political division between Newsom and Trump.
\n\u201cI worked well with Biden, during his time, with natural disasters, and I worked well with Donald Trump,\u201d DeSantis said, referring to hurricanes that have hit Florida as well as the deadly collapse of a beachfront condo in Surfside in 2021. \u201cSo, I\u2019m very confident, as a state that knows \u2014 we face these \u2014 that a Trump administration is going to be very strong and going to be there for the people regardless of party.\u201d
\nStill, any additional federal response will be overseen by Trump, who has a history of withholding or delaying federal aid to punish his political enemies.
\nIn September, during a press conference at his Los Angeles golf course, Trump threatened: \u201cWe won\u2019t give him money to put out all his fires. And if we don\u2019t give him the money to put out his fires, he\u2019s got problems.\u201d
\nTrump\u2019s support in California has increased in recent years, which could further embolden him in his tussles with Democratic leaders there. In 2024, he improved on his vote share in Los Angeles and surrounding areas hit by the fires by 4.68 percentage points. And while he still lost the state overall, he grew his overall margin by 4 points compared to the 2020 election.
\nAs for the impact of the fires on Californians, Trump said areas in Beverly Hills and around it were \u201cbeing decimated\u201d and that he had \u201cmany friends living in those houses.\u201d He framed the losses as a potential hit to the state\u2019s finances.
\n\u201cThe biggest homes, some of the most valuable homes in the world are just destroyed. I don\u2019t even know. You talk about a tax base, if those people leave you\u2019re going to lose half your tax base of California,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: As cataclysmic wildfires rage across Los Angeles, President-elect Donald Trump hasn\u2019t been offering much sympathy. Instead, he\u2019s claiming he could do a better job managing the crisis, spewing falsehoods and casting blame on the state\u2019s Democratic governor. Trump has lashed out at his longtime political foe Gov. Gavin Newsom\u2019s forest management policies and falsely …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":75454,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75445"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75456,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75445\/revisions\/75456"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}