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The Los Angeles wildfires were absolutely catastrophic and absolutely predictable. Since Day 1, Mayor Karen Bass, the woke identity politics figures running the fire department, the Department of Water and Power, and the entire corrupt system have been lying, obfuscating and trying to cover up what happened. And Gov. Gavin Newsom, the man at the top of the state, is fine with it.
Everyone with the least bit of decency whom they drag into their vortex of lies, beginning with the man who was supposed to be in charge of rebuilding, to the author of their report on the cause of the fires, has wanted out.
The author of the Los Angeles Fire Department’s after-action report on the Palisades fire declined to endorse it because of substantial deletions that altered his findings, calling the edited version “highly unprofessional and inconsistent with our established standards.”
Battalion Chief Kenneth Cook emailed then-interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva and other LAFD officials with the subject line “Palisades AARR Non-Endorsement,” about an hour after the highly anticipated report was made public Oct. 8.
“Having reviewed the revised version submitted by your office, I must respectfully decline to endorse it in its current form,” Cook wrote in the email obtained by The Times. “The document has undergone substantial modifications and contains significant deletions of information that, in some instances, alter the conclusions originally presented.”
The city had withheld Cook’s email from its response to a separate records request filed by an unknown party in October. Almost 180 of Cook’s emails were posted on the city’s records portal on Dec. 9, but the one that expressed his concerns about the report was missing. That email was only posted on the portal Tuesday, after The Times asked about it.
He did the right thing. He probably blew up his career and in a political climate where California voters seem to reward little else than leftist virtue signaling, that may prove fatal, but he did the right thing.
Because we know why this happened.
An hour after midnight Jan. 1, as a small brush fire blazed across Topanga State Park, a California State Parks employee texted the Los Angeles Fire Department’s heavy equipment supervisor to find out if they were sending in bulldozers.
“Heck no that area is full of endangered plants,” Capt. Richard Diede replied at 9:52 a.m, five hours after LAFD declared the fire contained.
“I would be a real idiot to ever put a dozer in that area,” he wrote. “I’m so trained.”
The Los Angeles Fire Department has faced criticism for not fully extinguishing the Lachman fire. In October, The Times reported that a battalion chief ordered firefighters to roll up their hoses and leave the burn area Jan. 2, even though crews warned that the ground was still smoldering. The LAFD also decided not to use thermal imaging technology to detect heat underground.
The LAFD was run by three lesbians named Kirsten. Systemic wokeness was the number one item on the agenda. The people in charge were glorified EMS paramedics who were there because of their race, gender, sexuality, etc…
After her appointment, Fire Chief Crowley vowed to prioritize a “work environment that is free of harassment, discrimination and hazing” and promised to build a new era of the LAFD through “the creation of systemic equity and inclusion across the LAFD.”
Systemic equity and inclusion kills.
The LAFD’s job wasn’t putting out fires, it was implementing leftist agenda items. And so LA burned.
SMH. A new low in stupidity.
It is not terribly surprising that local officials would put partisan politics above the good of the people they are elected to serve, but it is surprising those voters would stick around and bear the brunt of their officials zealotry. Hundreds of Californians — many talented and wealthy — lost homes in the blazes that raged across the L.A. basin a year ago. And many of them heard Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and California Governor Gavin Newsom promise that all efforts would be made to ease permitting and environmental regulations so they could rebuild quickly. Now a year later only one family is reinstalled in a house and progress on new construction is glacial. I don’t know if Bass and Newsom knew they were lying when they made those promises, but anyone with the slightest familiarity with California virtue signaling could have predicted reconstruction would not be easy or fast.
So I repeat my sense of wonderment, not at the duplicity of elected officials in that state, but at the readiness of Californians to continue to stay there. With so many reasonable places to live in the USA, why stay in that hellhole? If you need mountains, go to Nevada or Idaho. Or if it’s beaches you need, head to North Carolina. Warm climate? Arizona. And so on. Break out of that battered wife syndrome. Leave the high taxes and massive homelessness behind. And especially let those dishonest elected officials live without the benefit of your support. But by all means, leave your politics behind.
Highly intelligent and talented people repeatedly vote into office highly ambitious but unserious and untalented people. How does such a situation appear in the first place; how does it become resistant to change?
I suppose one could hypothesize that groupthink is a powerful organizer of “the mob” and a deterent to rational thought. Another possibility is that the talents and intelligence of these people is great but is extremely narrow in scope and on all other topics they are functional idiots. Possibly a combination of both.
That reminded me: at one time I knew more about local politics in the area I lived in than maybe 98% of the locals. Point is that almost all the voters were clueless about what was going on in local politics.
The good news is that LA can sell the never used dozers to purchase overpriced housing for the homeless…
So allow for people to loose their homes and everything they have in the name of protecting weeds. Eco-Stupidity the LAFD needs all new leadership instead of some Eco-Wacko/Tree Hugger
By the way – the endangered plants ALSO burned up. So, they accomplished absolutely nothing.
The pattern has become: Create the conditions for a disaster then wait for the disaster. Afterwards, sweep in with bureaucratic interference to prevent the owners rebuilding. Seize the property under eminent domain because there has been no rebuilding, and build your high density rat warren as you had planned.
Yes. And of course siphen off as much of that rebuilding money as corruption payoffs during this process. Corruption and activist judicial systems are Democrats’ modus operandi while pretending none of this is happening is Republicans’ default position to ensure their own salaries, pensions, tenure, payoffs, etc. (they’ll all still be there when Trump is gone in two years). Every other Western country’s politicians are even worse. Rome fell because this toxic systemic corruption putrefied their civilization until predators swept in and plundered the wreckage. Now we are Rome and islam is the opportunist predator. It didn’t have to be this way. But it is.
I am glad I left California 8 years ago. I miss the coast but look what I’d be putting up with.
Now, LA burned because of ineptness from lack of forestry to no water at the hydrants and three DEI dykes who don’t know how to blow out a match but eat pussy like a fiend,
I tell you, G-D’S judgement and wrath are clearly on California. Not one, but two torrential rains after the fires, that could have come before the fires to quelch them, but no0ooo, atheist to satanic California politics and greed allowed now, rains that are doing severe damage to California.
I was supposed to be there from Xmas to past New Years but I pulled a bicep tendon and had to cancel. Now, I think it was G-D ALMIGHTY, who snapped my tendon to save me from the atheists and in doing so, I have time to create two new enterprises. Ah the life of a serial entrepreneur.
I give G-D all the credit for my blessings, because 3 times in the west side of Los Angeles, I was living in one car or another I owned fearing complete homelessness to now being a self made millionaire where I supply homes to people who can’t get bank loans. I say this because California, USA, and the world has a scant few years left to get their focus right. Being anti-USA, anti-Israel with TDS spinning in your head and having ostrich parasitic mind syndrome is only going to get worse and worse for those who do.
Whatever else, can we agree the Palisades fire was a failure on the part of the government? And failures should be richly rewarded with a rapid exit from office, for everyone concerned.
Surely you are kidding. I’m sure the vast majority of voters in California believe the fires were the result of “climate change” rather than gross government incompetence.
There is a local case, where all the numerous comments vitriolically blamed Trump, who had nothing to do with the situation.
No tears for California. You get what you vote for.
Not just three lesbians but three beefy, morbidly obese lesbians sporting close cropped butch hairdos, one of whom proudly admitted that she was incapable of being able to carry out a male person trapped in a burning house. It also should be mentioned that the communist, Islamist incoming mayor just appointed a beefy, morbidly obese lesbian whose experience is as an EMT as the head of the NYC Fire Department. What could possibly go wrong in NYC with this choice.
Notice how the Democrats have fooled the rest of the country into blaming California voters, rather than the elections rigged by the Democrat Party.