Thousands of residents who have fled their homes are simply learning how terribly public officials have prepared for such an occasion as wildfires continue to burn in Los Angeles. Emergency response officials have been overly focused on sending fire equipment to Ukraine, keeping the poor safe, protecting tuna, and adopting green policies, such as making sure there is enough fluids to serve fire hydrants and ensuring that the strongest, best-trained, most-skilled firefighters are leading operations.
Officials believe that the only thing on your mind when a fire forces you to leave your house is the skin tone and historical background of the firefighters who will save you. Does their diversity been sufficient to save you? Are they anything other than direct white men, regardless of whether they are the best for the job?
That has been a major priority of the Los Angeles Fire Department ( LAFD), which, in 2022, launched its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Bureau ( DEI), purportedly “focused on ensuring a safe, diverse and inclusive workplace for all”.
In January 2022, then-Mayor Eric Garcetti checked several La boxes by appointing Kristin Crowley as flames captain, the first woman, LGBT chief in Los Angeles. That year, according to LAFD data,” of the more than 6, 500 applicants to LAFD, 70 % were people of color and nearly 8 % … were female”, which was “double the … percentage of female firefighters within the Department” at the time.
The LAFD Girls Camp is one avenue for recruitment for female firefighters, hosting girls between 14 and 18 to explore career opportunities in the department.
The LAFD City 2023-2026 strategic plan‘s four full pages of DEI will be a blessing to those who lost homes. LAFD has been busy training for fire response by reviewing the LAFD library “from a DEI perspective, to ensure policies, procedures, and language is consistent with the Department’s values”.
The LAFD Strategic Plan also describes intended spending to bolster its mission, including the following” sustainability” measures: “reduce electricity usage at all facilities” by implementing eco-friendly upgrades to lighting, power, and HVAC control systems, “install … solar energy parking shade structures”, “implement technology to monitor the Department’s net carbon emissions”, “purchase electric vehicles ( EV ) … to create a zero-emissions fleet”, “establish an EV emergency backup power system”, and “increase purchasing of certified energy-efficient products”.
When you consider all the green spending and a significant budget cut, it’s difficult to imagine how much money is still available for fire suppression. According to the New York Post, LAFD director Karen Bass slashed the budget for the fiscal year 2024 to 2025 by$ 17.6 million.
At least the LAFD has enough equipment. Apparently. In 2022 it sent five truckloads of” surplus” firefighting gear to Ukraine. Most homeowners assume that the fire department’s portion will be used for training and fire and crash response when they pay their property taxes. However, it must make the LAFD leaders feel good about using that money to buy gifts for Ukraine.
The mayor’s office has the LAFD collecting data on homeless encampments, tracking their needs. In a way, it makes sense that LAFD examines encampments where cooking occasionally gets out of hand and that is what normal cities would do. According to a report from ABC Channel 7 Television, “in 2018 there were an average of seven fires per day at encampments in Los Angeles. In 2021, that number jumped to 25” fires a day. However, some taxpayers may wonder why LAFD should focus so heavily on the homeless.
The word “homeless”, appears 11 times in the strategic plan, together, the words “diverse” and “diversity” appear 16 times, the word “water” appears just twice, and the word “hydrant”, does not appear at all. It is obvious that the priority is not fire suppression.
At a press conference on Wednesday morning that addressed why fire hydrants dried up when they were required to put out fires and thousands of people were evacuated from their homes, Los Angeles County and City struck a sometimes defensive tone.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power ( LADWP ) CEO and chief engineer Janisse Quiones explained the water failure and appealed to residents of the LADWP service area to conserve water.
” We had a lot of demand on our system in the Palisades,” said the organization. We pushed the system the extreme: Four times the normal demand was seen for 15 hours straight, which lowered our water pressure”, Quiñones said. What transpired in the Palisades was that we have three large water tanks, each with about a million gallons of water. We ran out of water in the first tank at about 4: 45 p. m. yesterday. We ran out of water in the second tank about 8: 30 p. m. and the third tank about 3 a. m. this morning. Because we were pushing so much water in our trunk line and because so much water was being used before it can get to the tanks, we were unable to fill the tanks quickly enough due to the pressure on the fire hydrants and the hills at Palisades.
” I need our customers to really conserve water, not just in the Palisade area, but the whole system, because the fire department needs the water to fight the fires, and we’re fighting a wildfire with urban water systems, and that is really challenging”, Quiñones said. She also urged people to boil their drinking water because there is” a lot of ash in the system.”
In April, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass appointed Quiones to lead the department” through the transition to 100 % clean energy by 2035″ and” to modernize]e its infrastructure, getting to a reliant and resilient water future, and ensuring vulnerable communities have access to affordable utilities.”
In the West Coast state, there is no justification for fire hydrants to dry. California should have the technology to prevent large fires and keep water flowing when needed if other states can do the same.
Firefighters all over the country are aware that, in times of need, they can pick up water from any lake or reservoir. Without fire hydrants, many rural areas only use this method to fight fires. California water never seems to be where it is needed, thanks to politics and policies.
In 2014, voters approved a$ 7.5 billion water bond to build two new reservoirs, but they have not been built yet.
As of last year, Gov. In order to protect some endangered fish, Gavin Newsom removed four dams on the Klamath River, leaving less surface water.  ,
The LAFD undoubtedly has a large number of incredibly brave firefighters ( who come from a variety of “diverse” backgrounds ) who are likely frustrated with the laws that put them in danger.
Los Angeles has forgotten the fundamental reason fire departments are in place, and there are victims and entire neighborhoods have been destroyed as a result.
The Federalist’s Beth Brelje is a correspondent for elections. She is an award-winning investigative journalist with decades of media experience.
