As Southern California continues to reel from the devastating fires that have engulfed entire Los Angeles County neighborhoods, the question on everyone’s mind is what sparked them and who is to blame.
Investigators with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have not determined a cause just yet. But what they find could hold dire economic, political, and financial consequences.
The crisis created by the fires, which have killed at least 25 people and displaced more than 100,000 from their homes, is far from over.
Lawsuits have already started to pile up, insurance companies have been vilified, and Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and Los Angeles Democratic Mayor Karen Bass have not only been taken to task, but recall efforts have started to gain momentum. State leaders have also been slammed for refusing to take necessary steps to reduce the amount of fire-prone vegetation near large population areas.
At the end of the day, none of the key players want to be holding the bag in what is one of the worst disasters to rock the area.
President-elect Donald Trump got into the action pretty quickly, turning the still-evolving disaster into a political opportunity to bash Newsom, his longtime political enemy, and blame state leaders for disastrous environmental policies.
“Governor Gavin Newscum refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the north to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way,” Trump posted on his Truth Social website. “He wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt, by giving it less water (it didn’t work), but didn’t care about the people of California.”
Trump’s post was quickly debunked because the fires had nothing to do with how much water moved from Northern to Southern California. The weak water pressure was due to demands on urban water systems that were designed for fighting house fires, not enormous, out-of-control wildfires.
Still, Trump’s comments exposed Newsom to attacks and several Republicans in Congress vowed that any federal relief given to the struggling state would have conditions placed on them.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) claimed that “state and local leaders were derelict in their duty in many respects,” citing what he called mistakes in “water resources management” and “forest management.”
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) said he would not vote for aid “unless we see a dramatic change in how they’re going to be handling these things in the future.”
Newsom pushed back on the claims federal aid should be conditional, calling it “un-American.”
“I’m not meeting Democrats, I’m not meeting Republicans. I’m not meeting Californians,” Newsom said in an interview on MSNBC that he posted on X. “I’m meeting American citizens desperate in need. And what they need is empathy, care, compassion, understanding. They need support, not rhetoric, not strings attached.”
Newsom also slammed Republicans for “politicizing this tragic moment” and has managed to secure cover for himself and his policies for the moment.
The same can’t be said about Bass.
Bass was halfway around the world when the fires broke out despite knowing that her city faced a major wildfire risk due to seasonal high winds and dry conditions.
Bass, who was in Ghana as part of a U.S. delegation to watch a presidential inauguration, appeared to have been posing for photos when the fires ignited. She not only broke a promise she made on the campaign trail not to travel abroad while in office, but when she got back, she tried to shift the blame.
Bass was put on blast by Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley for cutting the department’s budget by millions. In April, Bass proposed cutting $23 million from the fire department’s budget. That number was lowered to $17.6 million by the City Council, which came out to about a 2% decrease from the fire department’s 2023-2024 budget.
Bass has been busy trying to convince people that the cuts didn’t affect the department’s response to the fires. She has also pointed to the unprecedented winds she claimed supercharged the fires.
Local fire officials, while agreeing that the wild winds contributed to the fires being so hard to control, also maintain that the budget cuts Bass proposed hindered their ability to respond.
Time will tell if the bad optics and budget slashes will doom Bass’s bid for another term or kill her future political aspirations altogether.
Utility companies have also been faulted for the fires.
On Monday, Evangeline Iglesias filed a lawsuit against Southern California Edison, claiming the local utility company sparked the fire that burned down her Altadena home after ignoring warnings to shut down its power equipment.
It is believed that Iglesias’s lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, will be the first of many that put the blame on the utility companies operating in the area.
Fire agencies have already said they are investigating links between SCE and a still-burning Hurst Fire.
SCE spokeswoman Gabriela Ornelas issued the standard statement, saying the company’s “hearts remain with our communities during the devastating fires,” but was quick to add that “the cause of the fire continues to be under investigation.”
Iglesias’s lawyer, Ali Moghaddas, said the lawsuit was filed so quickly to preserve potential evidence that could help reconstruct the scene later in court.
SCE and other power companies operating in the area have issued statements saying they followed California Public Utilities Commission guidelines.
SCE’s parent company’s CEO, Pedro Pizarro, told ABC News that they have “not been able to get up close to the equipment yet because firefighters have not deemed the area safe for entry.”
“As soon as we can get close to it, we’ll inspect and we’ll be transparent with the public,” he said.
Moghaddas has pushed back on Pizarro’s response about being transparent, claiming the company hasn’t been honest about which lines and transmission towers were de-energized during the peak of the winds.
“They had the tools to try to mitigate the possibility of this wildfire, and instead, they chose to ignore those warnings,” he told NPR.
In recent years, SCE has paid out hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements related to seven other wildfires.
If utilities are to blame for the blazes, it could also decimate California’s $21 billion wildfire fund that is split equally between shareholders and utility customers.
“This is the most profound test case that the fund will potentially be up against,” Christopher Holden, a former Democratic legislator who sponsored the bill that created the fund, told the Los Angeles Times.
Holden, who had to evacuate his Pasadena home, told the news outlet what was unfolding is “a new frontier.”
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“It was a new frontier when we wrote the bill — and now, just five years later, we’re going through another frontier,” he added.
The sheer damage caused by the ongoing fires has raised questions not only about the fund’s ability to cover the damage from this year’s fire but whether it has enough money to bail out utilities in the future.
