The Reckoning

After the horror, we witnessed the deluge of voices telling us to see it as a morality tale — a harsh but necessary lesson about the hubris of living in a beautiful but dangerous place. 

“We couldn’t have stopped these fires,” cry our state and local officials and their defenders in the media. “Didn’t you see the size of those flames? The strength of those winds? Global warming had a lot to do with it, just like we’ve been warning for years. It was always preposterous to build a city in a hot dry land along an earthquake fault, and foolish to build homes in places where wildfires are a constant threat. The fires were tragic but inevitable.”

The people whose incompetence and lies are on full display would have us believe that not they, but we are guilty for choosing to live here, and shouldn’t expect them to do their best to protect us from the merciless avenging god. What, you expect water in the fire hydrants? Your mayor to keep her promise not to leave the country, just because her officials are warning of extreme fire danger? Firemen to respond to your 911 call begging for help to evacuate because you’re an old man in a wheelchair?  Don’t you understand it’s impossible to be safe in these perilous times?

Fires in California, and the Santa Ana winds, are indeed inevitable. Global warming probably did contribute to making the blazes worse. But there was nothing inevitable about how catastrophic they were. Global warming didn’t cut the LA Fire Department’s budget, turning it into the most understaffed fire department of any major American city. Global warming didn’t prevent California from building any of the reservoirs voters approved 10 years ago. Global warming didn’t make California cancel planned controlled burns last fall and fail to clear brush, leaving countless acres of fuel ready to ignite. Global warming didn’t prevent the city from pre-deploying firefighters where fires were most likely to break out. Global warming didn’t drain the Santa Ynez reservoir in the Palisades — 117 million gallons of water, exactly where it was needed — and leave it untouched and empty for nearly a year. It took people with political power to do these things, or fail to do them, and now they want us to believe that their obvious incompetence has nothing to do with the subsequent hellscape.

Global warming didn’t prevent California from building any of the reservoirs voters approved 10 years ago. Global warming didn’t make California cancel planned controlled burns last fall and fail to clear brush, leaving countless acres of fuel ready to ignite. 

You don’t get this level of ineptitude without some countervailing ideology behind it. Our true-blue leaders and officials just aren’t turned on by the drudgery of governance; their minds are enthused with the higher calling to purge society of its racism, sexism (or “gender-based inequality”), transphobia, neocolonialism and all manner of other social sins.  They are committed to redressing history’s countless injustices. They can’t be expected to think about all that and the infrastructure too. 

Those empty fire hydrants, for instance. A whistleblower told the Daily Mail that the fire department used to check every hydrant once a year, and often found them not functioning. The fire department would issue a report, and it would take months to get fixed. Last year the department, its budget cut beyond endurance, said they were simply too busy handling calls, and handed the job of checking hydrants to the water department. “I would be willing to bet DWP didn’t do this,” the whistleblower said.  

The DWP leaders had other priorities. On Karen Bass’ orders, last May the city somehow found the money to hire new CEO Janisse Quiñones at a salary of $750,000 — double that of her predecessor. She’d been a top executive at PG&E, which went bankrupt over its responsibility for several previous wildfires. She declared that putting an equity lens on everything was the “number one thing that attracted” her to her new role (the hefty salary presumably didn’t hurt). And she was a Latina, the first to head the corporation. Her elevation, in other words, was an inspiration for women of color everywhere. Why make a stink about an empty reservoir?

The LA Fire Department heads, too, were enraptured by the virtue of pursuing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI). Fire Chief Kristin Crowley, the department’s first female chief, created its first DEI Bureau and declared herself “super inspired” about creating a more diverse workplace. The day her appointment was unanimously confirmed by City Council, Crowley told NBC 4 she wasn’t looking for  specific numbers, because “it’s never enough.”

DEI proponents insist, of course, that no one is hired who isn’t qualified, but whistleblowers say that isn’t true; standards have been lowered to admit women. An anonymous firefighter told journalist Michael Shellenberger: “We no longer require two firefighters to be able to throw a 35-foot ladder because of the amount of women that were failing that. So now, it’s just a three-person ladder. We no longer require that as a job requirement. In the field that doesn’t work because we don’t have enough people to spare when a fire is happening to just throw one ladder.”

These DEI issues may very well have cost people’s lives. A fire department that was cut to the bone made a terrible situation worse by putting women in positions requiring the physical strength they simply don’t have. Material reality still matters, even in California.

This wildfire tragedy has roots that go beyond our state’s legendary absorption in tofu, yoga and airy-fairy beliefs, and they involve the kind of society we want to live in, and how we view ourselves. To our elected officials, above all Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, we are all groaning with sin and need to atone. We live on stolen land, enjoying wealth created by slavery and bloody imperial conquest. Only partial redemption may be granted to those who do the necessary penance. In this world, lies are not only permissible but virtuous, as long as they aren’t the other side’s lies. 

“I’m literally talking to the president right now,” Newsom told a distraught LA resident who confronted him about her daughter’s school burning down. He pointed to his phone. “To specifically answer the question of what we can do for you and your daughter,” he added.

“Can I hear it?” the woman asked. “Can I hear your call? Because I don’t believe it.” Newsom pointed again to his phone, his face registering helplessness. “I’m sorry, there’s literally– I’ve tried five times, that’s why I’m walking around to make the call.”

This ignominious scene — the state’s highest elected leader, lying to a citizen about what he was doing about the disaster that took place under his watch — should really be his epitaph. But it goes beyond him, or Bass, or Quiñones, or any of the other grifters who have so far failed to take any responsibility for their role in this horror show. It’s about a mindset fundamentally at odds with keeping people safe. DEI must DIE, or we will.

Kathleen Hayes is the author of ”Antisemitism and the Left: A Memoir.”