I am a Northern California native. Fires rampage through my region during the dry summers every year. For this reason, when the Los Angeles fires broke out on Jan. 7, I thought little of it. Looking at my fire tracker app, I saw the Palisades and Eaton fires at 23,000 and 17,000 acres, which seemed small. The Park Fire, which burned through half a million acres of Northern California a couple months ago, seemed more noteworthy than two “little” fires down in LA. Yet the Park Fire didn’t make national headlines. 

Fires in California are not new. Neither are the conditions that create them. But finally the nation is catching onto what many of us in California have known for a long time: Poor leadership and poor policy are destructive. LA’s failures are blatant proof of that. Looking forward, Californians should consider moments like these and ask what leaders they want to protect their communities. Gov. Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass are not the leaders California needs.

No one can deny the treacherous conditions leading up to the fire. The Santa Ana “Devil” winds coming from the California desert, with gusts up to 80 miles per hour, created perfect conditions for wildfires. 

Freshman Elizabeth Christian, an LA resident whose home was within three miles of a fire, said the fires were likely a consequence of the Santa Ana winds knocking down power lines and transformers, which then exploded and sparked fires.

“Because of the high winds, it was like a blowtorch, torching across the land, and winds made it so we couldn’t get air support for a really long time,” Christian said.

But these winds were not a surprise to LA officials. They knew what was coming and yet were scrambling when the fires descended. 

Yes, the treacherous winds were sometimes unpredictable and cannot be controlled by human hands. But human hands can put policies in place to prevent those winds from decimating communities.

California has been plagued by policies that consider the safety and prosperity of the future environment over the safety and needs of people today. Preventable conditions affected the effectiveness of LA firefighters.

The Santa Ynez Reservoir, which holds a supply of 117 million gallons of water for the Pacific Palisades, has been bone dry since Feb. 2024, when it was allegedly closed down for repairs. However, when Free Press reporter Austyn Jeffs visited the reservoir Jan. 10, he saw “no construction materials or vehicles around the reservoir.”

“Firefighters told Austyn that there was no communication from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP) to the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) about any water supply issues,” Jeffs reported. “Instead, the LAFD had to use water supply from three backup tanks, each holding only about 1 million gallons of water. They blew through it in less than a day.”

Reported by the L.A. Times on Jan. 11, Los Angeles DWP general manager Martin Adams claimed the reservoir water would have “helped” but not “saved the day.” However, there’s reason to doubt what he’s saying. If the water indeed would have made a difference, his company and management are the ones to criticize. He has a conflict of interest.

An additional condition that impacted the effectiveness of the firefighters was their lack of manpower. Between the 2023-24 and 2024-25 fiscal year, funding for the city’s fire department decreased by $17.6 million. On Dec. 4, just a month before the LA fires broke out, Fire Chief Kristin Crowley sent a memo to Bass noting the “unprecedented operational challenges” the department has faced due to the budget cuts.

“These budgetary reductions have adversely affected the Department’s ability to maintain core operations, such as technology and communication infrastructure, payroll processing, training, fire prevention, and community education,” Crowley wrote.

Because of its limited budget, the LA fire department is severely understaffed and under-resourced. As one of the most fire-prone areas of the country, the LAFD has less than one firefighter for every 1,000 residents. This does not meet the demand of those communities. For comparison, cities like Chicago and Dallas have staffing closer to two firefighters per the same number of residents. 

For a state that frequently fights fires, one would hope the fire departments and their leadership could preemptively protect our communities. This was clearly not the case this month. The fire department is simply doing its best with the current resources they have, which are minimal due to poor policy. We owe much gratitude to the brave men and women currently fighting the fires, some of whom lost their homes to this disaster. 

Consequently, these fires have leveled parts of one of America’s most prosperous cities to a layer of ash and rubble. As of now, the Palisades and Eaton fires have destroyed over 15,000 structures and taken at least 28 lives. And they’re still burning.

The media can spend all the air time on who’s to blame for these fires, but at this exact moment people are suffering. It’s too late to prevent the Palisades and Eaton fires because they are still ravaging across acres and destroying people’s livelihoods along the way. Instead, we should focus on sending relief to those affected by the fire and make sure that money is spent well. 

 If reservoirs were full and the fire department had the needed manpower and resources to fight the fires, such devastation might have been avoided. But moving forward, the nation needs to keep a close eye on Newsom and Bass to make sure they’re doing right by Californians. 

Mel Gibson, whose Malibu home was destroyed in the fire, said Los Angeleans need to take control of the rebuilding of their communities and distrust the words of Newsom and Bass.

“As a citizen here, Newsom and Bass want us to trust them to reimagine the city, our city, and how they think it should be,” Gibson said in a Jan. 16 interview on the “Arroyo Grande Show.” “Look at what they’ve done so far to this town. You’ve got nothing but rampant crime, acute homelessness, high taxes, mismanagement of water, fires, and we’re supposed to trust them with millions of dollars to remake where we live.”

My hope is that enough national attention puts the pressure on Newsom and Bass to put ineffective policies aside to prioritize Californians’ safety. As a state, and as a nation, we need to come together and think seriously about who we let run our communities. Californians, and Americans, have an slew of governor and mayoral elections upcoming in 2026. Citizens should recall tragedies such as these fires to inform their vote.

“There’s definitely a lot of rebuilding that needs to be done, but I am seeing a lot of salvation in it and maybe this is the push we need to come together and focus on what is really good,” Christian said.

As for now, the fires are not yet out. People are suffering and more will suffer if there is no change in leadership. We can mourn the lives affected while holding righteous anger at the failed leadership of our state. So let us pray for the suffering, focus on rebuilding, and encourage Californians to vote for better leaders.

 

Lauren Bixler is sophomore studying politics.