Firestorm of Neglect: How Leadership Failures Ignited Los Angeles’ Wildfires
Protecting Wildlife, Families, and the Future of California
As Los Angeles burns, the flames scorch not only the land but also the delicate balance of biodiversity, the safety of families, and the lives of countless pets and wildlife. This crisis is a direct result of decades of failed leadership, mismanagement, and misplaced priorities. It’s time for a reckoning and a path forward.
The Crisis in Biodiversity
How Wildfires Are Decimating Ecosystems and Wildlife
California’s unique ecosystems are suffering immeasurably. From the chaparral and oak woodlands to the wildlife corridors that allow species to thrive, the fires have devastated habitats essential for biodiversity. Coyotes, deer, rabbits, and countless bird species face displacement, injury, or death. Small mammals and reptiles, crucial to the food web, are incinerated in their burrows, further destabilizing the fragile ecosystems of Southern California.
Pets and Families in Peril
The Human and Animal Toll of Leadership Failures
The toll extends to domestic animals. Families scrambling to escape the flames often have little time to grab their pets, leaving them behind to face horrifying fates. Animal shelters, already overburdened due to mismanagement and lack of funding, are now overwhelmed by a surge of injured and displaced animals. Los Angeles’ policies, which have prioritized symbolic gestures over effective animal welfare strategies, have left these shelters ill-prepared for such a disaster.
Meanwhile, human families are losing everything. Homes, heirlooms, and livelihoods are reduced to ash while political leaders fail to act decisively. The fires don’t just destroy property—they rip apart the fabric of entire communities. Families face weeks, months, or even years of displacement, compounded by the mental and emotional toll of witnessing their lives go up in smoke.
A Legacy of Neglect
Budget Cuts, Infrastructure Failures, and Mismanagement
This calamity was not inevitable. It is the direct result of systemic failures by California’s leadership. Over $17.5 million was cut from the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) budget by Mayor Karen Bass, significantly hampering firefighting capabilities. Worse still, just days before the fires broke out, Bass sought an additional $49 million in budget reductions for the LAFD, showcasing an alarming disregard for the escalating risks of urban wildfires.
Despite urgent National Weather Service warnings of extreme fire conditions, Bass chose to travel to Ghana on a cultural junket, abandoning her post at a critical moment. Governor Gavin Newsom, for his part, delayed mobilizing the National Guard for seven crucial days, leaving firefighters under-resourced and overextended.
Newsom also cut $101 million from wildfire and forest resilience programs in the 2024-25 state budget. These cuts impacted seven key programs, including reductions in funding for Cal Fire fuel reduction teams, vegetation management, state conservancies, and a "home hardening" program aimed at protecting homes from fires - all of which could have dramatically reduced the damage of the current fires.
Further, California’s failure to invest in water infrastructure has compounded this tragedy. The state has neglected to build sufficient reservoirs, desalination plants, and water recycling systems. While countries like Israel have developed robust water management infrastructure, California—despite its wealth and technological expertise—has been paralyzed by radical environmentalist policies that block such projects. These policies prioritize ideological purity over pragmatic solutions, leaving Los Angeles unprepared to face growing environmental challenges.
Homelessness and the Fire Crisis
The Dangerous Intersection of Policy and Reality
Adding fuel to the fire is the homelessness crisis. More than half of all fires the Los Angeles Fire Department responds to are linked to homeless encampments. The city’s permissive policies have allowed these encampments to spread unchecked, turning public spaces into tinderboxes. At least one of the current fires has already been confirmed as having been started by a homeless individual. These tragedies illustrate how the intersection of homelessness, lax law enforcement, and political inaction has disastrous consequences for everyone.
Environmental Ironies
The Bitter Consequences of Misguided Leadership
The leadership failures of Newsom and Bass are part of a broader pattern of radical mismanagement. They have prioritized ideological agendas over the safety and well-being of Californians, their pets, and the state’s precious wildlife. For decades, progressive policies have blocked effective forest management, fire prevention measures, and the expansion of nuclear power—an ideal energy source for desalination and sustainability.
Despite warnings from the National Weather Service, Newsom and Bass failed to prepare adequately for this disaster. They ignored the importance of proactive measures like deploying mobile sprinkler systems, wetting down vulnerable areas, and using advanced technology to detect and extinguish fires early. Their inaction has resulted in preventable destruction.
The loss of wildlife, pets, and homes is compounded by the broader environmental catastrophe. These fires have not only destroyed habitats but also released massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, exacerbating climate change concerns. The irony is bitter: the same leaders who claim to champion environmentalism have allowed policies that actively harm the environment.
A Call to Action
Federal Intervention and a Path to Recovery
The time for excuses is over. Los Angeles needs immediate and decisive intervention. The scale of this disaster and the failures of local and state leadership demand that Californians act swiftly to save lives, protect wildlife, and prevent further destruction.
California residents must demand that their federal representatives invoke the Stafford Act to bring federal resources, oversight, and expertise to bear.
This includes:
Federal Oversight of Leadership Failures: Investigate and hold California’s leaders accountable for systemic mismanagement, ensuring future disasters are mitigated through competence, not ideology.
Federal Investment in Water Infrastructure: Accelerate the construction and expansion of reservoirs, desalination plants, and water recycling systems with surplus capacity to combat future crises.
Comprehensive Fire Prevention Initiatives: Require advanced fire mitigation strategies, including mobile sprinkler systems, fuel reduction, and technology for early detection and suppression.
Addressing Homelessness and Fire Risk: Enforce federal policies that prevent encampments in high-risk areas while funding rehabilitation and housing programs for vulnerable populations.
Animal Welfare Support: Secure federal funding for animal shelters, emergency evacuation plans, and resources to aid displaced pets and wildlife.
Los Angeles is at a crossroads. The smoldering ruins of this once-thriving city are a testament to the dangers of neglect and ideological governance. Californians cannot wait for local leaders to acknowledge their failures. Contact your federal representatives today and demand immediate action to protect families, pets, wildlife, and the environment. Together, we must rise from these ashes to forge a safer and more sustainable future.
How to Contact Your Federal Representatives Online:
These tools ensure quick and straightforward access to your representatives for communication or advocacy purposes. In the meantime, I encourage all LA residents to sign the above petition.
Ed Boks is a former Executive Director of the New York City, Los Angeles, and Maricopa County Animal Care & Control Departments, and a former Board Director of the National Animal Control Association. His work has been published in the LA Times, New York Times, Newsweek, Real Clear Policy, Sentient Media, and now on Animal Politics with Ed Boks.
Despite all that is happening.. I see Best Friends and Wings of Rescue are both busy fundraising off this disaster. We know that Wings of Rescue has a long history is flying animals out of disasters FAST (hurricanes, tornados, floods and fires) to overcrowded HIGH KILL SHELTERS. And raising millions in the process. Please donate to actual organizations who are on the ground before, during and AFTER the fire.
❤️In LA , here are 2 super
reputable organizations
🐾 WAGS and WALKS
🐾 LANGE Foundation
Both boots on the ground NOW!
Stay safe.
First, a comment relayed from the Normal Fire Department in Normal, Illinois, which, speaking as a former firefighter in both Alaska & Quebec, strikes me as much better informed than anything coming out of the Los Angeles area or political offices lately:
"By now, you have undoubtedly seen the devastation of the wildfires in California this week. It's hard to imagine the situation that they are facing, but this may help put it in perspective.
"The last estimate of the Palisades fire shows more than 31.2 square miles completely destroyed. That's 2.40 times the size of the Town of Normal.
"The systems needed to fight a fire on this scale do not exist. No municipal water supply is designed to handle the kind of strain that the firefighting efforts in California are putting on it.
"When a fire hydrant is opened, it takes a large volume of water out of the system rapidly, which affects the remaining supply and lowers the available pressure elsewhere. Eventually, the pumps that refill the tanks won't be able to keep up with the water that is being pumped out and pressure will drop.
"This is an area larger than the corporate limits of the Town of Normal with thousands of structures burning simultaneously. That's what they're fighting with out there... Not to mention the 80+MPH winds creating a firestorm through homes and dry vegetation.
"Firefighting on the ground is virtually impossible in this scenario, and the aerial tankers (planes and helicopters that drop water and retardant) initially couldn't fly due to the high winds.
"This fire is eight times larger than the Great Chicago Fire. It's a disaster on a scale that is just hard to comprehend. We are thinking of all of the firefighters, and everyone trying to mitigate this disaster, and our sympathies go out to the lives lost, and those that have lost everything."
Second, a journalistic fact of life, paraphrased from a leading academic journalist:
"Some years ago, we co-hosted a journalism workshop on campus during which there was a hypothetical scenario presented involving a catastrophic wildfire hitting a major city. With the exception of two science writers in the room, the overwhelming majority of the 30+ reporters spent their time for questions looking under rocks for villains and scurrilous politicians. Only the science reporters were asking about the facts
of the wildfire situation."
My 2¢ about why this was, and is now in Los Angeles:
1) We are great apes, and great apes will always watch a fight more readily than study a problem. Of the other great apes, orangutans are most likely to study a problem; chimps, one of our two closest relatives, are more likely to study ways and means of winning a fight; bonobos, our other closest relatives, will study a problem only if they don't have the opportunity to either have sex or watch someone having sex.
E.g., conflict & sex are what our readers/viewers most want, and what interests most reporters most, too.
2) Most reporters break in covering politics or sports, i.e. in win/lose situations.
3) If we do succeed in getting a story about complex issues on page one or the top of the TV news, the editor or anchor person will demand (sometimes on camera, live), "Who's to blame?"
Someone has to be blamed. That's rule #1 of great ape behavior in a crisis. If no one can be blamed, you get social disorder, because if leaders can't blame someone, they get deposed.
And now to the realities of the blaming.
What Beth & I are seeing, in days of combing social media for updates on the animal aspects of the Los Angeles fires, are zillions of posts denying that either global warming, weather, or geography had anything to do with any of it, that it was/is all the fault of (pick one) the Jews; Gavin Newsom; a gay female fire chief; lack of logging in the Angeles National Forest, which never had any timber to begin with; the snail darter (a tiny fish that lives only in Tennessee); the Delta smelt, another tiny fish, now believed to be extinct in the wild, whose conservation status never did have anything to do with the Los Angeles water supply); liberals, actually seldom seen in southern California; Mexicans; the homeless; & practically any other possible target except Mickey Mouse.
Mickey still seems to be in favor. But telling people not to rebuild on heaps of cinders that have already burned over multiple times in the past 70 years is not, let alone telling them how to rebuild, for example using rooftop solar for electricity instead of rebuilding overhead high voltage power lines that have already fallen down X-number of times in strong winds, producing showers of sparks.
Mickey was already telling folks to go solar 63 years ago, when my brother Ted & I visited Tomorrowland. But Goofy still seems to be governing energy policy.
And now, finally, a word about "controlled burns." I helped to put out several wildfires caused by "controlled burns" that got out of hand when the wind unexpectedly picked up or changed direction. "Controlled burns" in dry, windy habitat are at best a theory, not a safely executed reality on any but the smallest, most confined scale.
What is a reality, easily visible from the fire maps, is that the major source of the Los Angeles catastrophe is fire spreading house-to-house, because houses are not constructed with preventing fire risk in mind. Preventing fire risk means no open flame sources indoors, i.e. no gas stoves or water heaters or fireplaces or woodstoves; steel or ceramic tile roofs, not tar & gravel or wooden shingles; stucco or flame-resistant siding, not vinyl; and no vegetation overhanging roofs; and no vegetation right up against exterior walls. Much of this has been known at least since Roman times, & is why Nero didn't succeed in burning all of Rome.
Nero did succeed in blaming Christians for his catastrophic fire. But it wasn't really Nero to blame for the fire, though he could & should have been blamed for quite a lot. It was Romans more interested in circuses than in building with intelligent respect for their natural environment, exactly as we have seen in Los Angeles for 200 years.
Last, from Harold Meyerson:
"Chapter Three of Mike Davis’s 'Ecology of Fear,' published in 1998, is entitled 'The Case for Letting Malibu Burn.' It begins by noting that L.A.’s pre-European residents, the Chumash and Tongva Indians, annually set small fires in the hills of Pacific Palisades and Malibu to clear out the brush that would explode if left in place. [Note that this was before any nearby cities existed.] Davis notes that Richard Henry Dana wrote in his seafaring classic 'Two Years Before the Mast' that when he first sailed up the California coast in 1826, he saw a fire engulfing Topanga Canyon. Davis then documents the thirteen fires that had burned at least ten thousand acres in the Santa Monica Mountains just west of the Palisades between 1930 and 1996. Davis makes a compelling case that the dry hills surrounding Los Angeles, running from Pasadena in the east to Malibu in the west, will regularly ignite when the Santa Ana winds blow, and that building houses in those hills all but guarantees that many of those houses will burn, particularly when those winds soar above fifty miles per hour."