LA is Burning

Let's score some political points...

January 18, 2025

For the past week, the headlines have been focused on the unfolding catastrophe in Los Angeles with wildfires that dwarf anything LA residents have ever experienced. Those of us who do not spend a lot of time there are having difficulty comprehending the scope and scale of the events. Fires are consuming entire neighborhoods of a city that encompasses over 500 square miles. I tried to put some of the stories in perspective by comparing the acreage mentioned to something I could visualize, like the size of Manhattan, which is 14,604 acres. There are four major fires defined in LA, two of which, the Eaton Fire and the Palisades fire, have each consumed areas larger than the entirety of Manhattan, along with thousands of homes and businesses. These events reportedly sprang from a perfect storm of weather extremes: excessive rain last summer which precipitated above average growth of vegetation, followed by months of very little rain which dried out all of that undergrowth to provide fuel for the fires, followed by excessively hot seasonal temperatures, all coupled with Southern California’s Santa Ana winds to fan the flames and spread the fires. President-elect Trump, never one to miss an opportunity to ignore science to make sophomoric arguments or make up juvenile nicknames for his political opponents, blamed the fires on the incompetence of blue state officials in general and California Governor Gavin “Newscum” (sic) in particular. No “thoughts and prayers”, or promises of help, or pledges of “the full resources of the federal government for the good people of California” from this guy, just the usual school yard trash talk.

Governor Newsom is legitimately concerned that the new president could withhold federal disaster relief from his state, something that he has threatened in the past after disasters in Utah and Michigan and Puerto Rico. Speaker Johnson has already picked up on that theme, suggesting that federal disaster relief should be tied to “conditions”, because California leaders “were derelict in their duty”. Apparently, the freshly elected Speaker feels that homeless wildfire victims should be punished further because of the incompetence he sees in Democratic officials in California. Good “Christian”, our House Speaker.

Los Angeles mayor, Karen Bass, was on a diplomatic mission to Ghana at the request of President Biden when this hell broke loose, giving Republicans and the media another opportunity to blame President Biden and blue state Democrats for the devastation on their TV screens. I am old enough to remember a time when no one would even think about trying to score political points at a time like this. In moments of national crisis, when there are thousands of citizens being driven from their homes, politicians would put down their weapons and just offer to help. Not these Republicans. The citizens in need are Democrats.

California wildfires are nothing new, or course, but fires of this magnitude in Los Angeles, in the middle of winter, are not an expected event. They will be now. After the immediacy of fighting the fires is dealt with, the longer-term repercussions of these climate change induced weather extremes will continue to play out. The footprint of the area impacted by climate change is expanding far beyond the places that we usually think about. Even here in the Adirondacks, municipal comprehensive plans are addressing the probability of demographic changes due to a climate induced population move away from coastal areas in eastern locales impacted by rising sea levels and from western states whose fire seasons are expanding to intolerable levels for many residents. Just as home insurance has become unaffordable or unavailable in hurricane-prone states like Florida in recent years, insurers in California are now reeling from the surge of claims from the fires. Forecasters see no relief in sight, and many insurers will no doubt reprice coverage to reflect current weather realities and the increase in exposure that comes with it—or leave the state entirely.

A few years ago, my wife and I were staying at a lodge in Sonoma during what was – at least for the time – a devastating fire season that had ravaged Napa and Sonoma. There were very few out of state visitors at the lodge, the majority were refugees from the surrounding fires. Some had lost their homes to the fires, and some had been evacuated from the approaching blaze and had no idea what they were going home to, or if they were going home at all. Some of the residents had been staying at the inn for weeks and the rest of us got to know each other after a few days of morning breakfasts together in the dining room. At one of these communal meals, we were talking to one of the couples who had been evacuated from their home a few miles away. When we told them we lived in the Adirondacks, they seemed startled and wanted to know how we could live there. “Don’t you get an incredible amount of snow there?” they asked. These were two people who had been evacuated from their home to escape an encroaching inferno consuming whole neighborhoods—and this was not the first time that they had been through this—and they were asking us about…snow. “You have a fire season here”, I responded, incredulously. Obviously, some people really love living in California, but I will never forget the conversation, which I have retold on countless occasions.

For me, the scariest part of this current story is the realization that we have just returned to power a climate change denier who will seize the first opportunity to cancel our participation in international climate agreements when we need to be—and should be— leading these initiatives. This is a man who in 2020 recommended to California that they deal with these fire seasons by doing a better job of cleaning their forest floors because “there are many, many years of leaves and broken trees and they’re like, like, so flammable, you touch them and it goes up.” No thought given, of course, to the actual science of climate change.

Drill, baby drill.

Before my wife and I retired, we had a financial advisory practice in the Hudson Valley. I tried to stay on top of current events to be better prepared to speak with clients about their concerns. I tried to read a balanced selection of newspapers and magazines, with both liberal and conservative agendas, not just in an attempt to keep my own views properly informed, but to see what my clients were seeing. I kept an eye on “Trending Topics” and “Most Shared Articles” on various media platforms, to try and anticipate questions from clients during the week. I still do that out of habit, and a continuing fascination with what people worry about. These past few weeks have brought about the proverbial firehose of news, and last weekend I was wondering what stories would capture people’s attention— would it be the transition in Washington, or the escalating warnings of the looming AI apocalypse, or would it be the wildfires raging in California? I scanned my morning New York Times seeking guidance from their informed readership. The topic that had captured the most attention, as reflected by the “Most Shared Article” as of Sunday night:

OBJECT OF DESIRE
Bonnets Are the Winter Hat of the Moment. For Adults.
Grown-up versions of the infant staple have become increasingly sought-after.

Go figure.

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