Returning to the Scene of the Political Crime

I return to the devastating fires that engulfed large city blocks in Pacific Palisades, Altadena, and other areas of greater Los Angeles in January of this year. As of June 6, 2025, almost 6 months after the final flame was extinguished, a total of 55 building permits have been issued. Any request where an applicant intends to use natural gas has been rejected. These fires killed 30 people, destroyed 18,000 homes and structures, and spread devastation over 57,000 acres.

Even saved houses in the burned-up areas remain uninhabitable due to heat compromising their structural integrity, and they are now crammed with lead, ash, debris, and melted siding and windows.

Except for small, almost meaningless payments, homeowners are constantly turned away by insurance companies, including the state-owned Fair Plan Insurance. This insurance offered a 6-month rental period for fire victims. This is about to expire, and people who continue to pay mortgages on an uninhabitable home are infuriated – and who can blame them? Previously, many insurance companies left the state when the California government restricted justified rate hikes.

As the January wildfires burned, in the article, “Government mismanagement, not climate change, is to blame for California’s destructive wildfires”, Chuck DeVore the Chief National Initiatives Officer at the Texas Public Policy Foundation writes, “In 1834, a 19-year-old Richard Henry Dana Jr. boarded a ship in Boston and sailed to California. Dana Point in Southern California is his namesake. On his return, he flipped his diary into a book, “Two Years Before the Mast.” In it, he describes the area that’s burning now:

And further adds:

“The only thing which diminishes its beauty is, that the hills have no large trees upon them, they having been all burnt by a great fire which swept them off about a dozen years before, and they had not yet grown up again. The fire was described to me by an inhabitant, as having been a very terrible and magnificent sight. The air of the whole valley was so heated that the people were obliged to leave the town and take up their quarters for several days upon the beach.”

History tells the story better than climate-mongering politicians, their media ilk, and government-monetized scientists.

As I identify in my article, “A Saturday Short - Deflection of Blame” these fires were entirely the result of state and city policy malpractice. Whether it’s irrational water shortage in reservoirs, constant forestry mismanagement, neglect of known approaching detrimental weather conditions, lack of patrols, or budgetary deficiencies in fire departments, search the phrase “Climate Change not to Blame for California Wildfires in January 2025”. The return of browser responses from the legacy media is that the culpability is on climate change.

Politics before people is always the reason justified by illiberal liberals and the climate-obsessed progressives, just as they were with California‘s Camp Fire of November 2018.

That wildfire occurred in Butte County, California, in November 2018. This fire was 153,336 acres in size, caused 85 fatalities, and destroyed almost 19,000 homes and structures. As I cover in my article, “The Relocation of People” , ignition points were twofold, writing, “In 2016 then Governor Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown” vetoed state senate bill SB 1643, which would have reinforced weakened power poles in fire-prone areas. Also, as California’s fire investigations conclude, it appears another major ignition point for several fires ends up in handcuffs and being led to jail”.

And further, “Cal Fire, a division of the government’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, articulated that climate change is not a participant. Excess fuels are constantly being created because of anti-logging legislation, a deficiency of prescribed burns, elimination of fire breaks and berms, and no forest floor clearing, cleaning, or scarification.”

What’s the latest building regulation being imposed by California lawmakers – the requirements for fireproof building materials? Are they refilling the reservoirs to capacity? Are they changing their forestry practices by clearing underbrush and dead trees? Are they strengthening power poles? Are they refraining from additional tax increases on gasoline? And, most importantly, are they satisfying the needs, deserved demands, and anxieties of the victims they created? No, and what a shame for these devastated people.

Blessings to niece Katie and her family, who are innocent victims of this tragedy and the shameless inaction of the many.