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California governor slams ‘delusional’ Trump while incoming VP highlights fire hydrants failing on firefighters
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JD Vance led the Republican assault against California’s state and local governments on Sunday as conservatives eagerly pile on Democratic leaders for insufficient water supplies and emergency efforts as firefighters continue to battle wildfires around Los Angeles.
On Sunday, the incoming vice president told Fox News Sunday’s Shannon Bream that California’s leaders were incompetent.
“We need to do a better job. We need competent, good governance,” Vance said. “There was a serious lack of competent governance in California, and I think it’s part of the reason why these fires have gotten so bad.”
The devastation in Los Angeles over the past week has been enormous; three large wildfires and several smaller brushfires have ravaged entire communities, leaving thousands under mandatory evacuation orders. Whole suburbs, such as the Pacific Palisades and Altadena, are thought to be largely destroyed.
Initial reports over the course of last week depicted firefighters as stretched thin and unable to access water in many communitites. The state has been under drought conditions for months, and in the Palisades, reports surfaced that fire hydrants were broken as firefighters tried in vain to halt the blazes.
California’s governor Gavin Newsom has requested an investigation into water usage and reports of fire hydrants not working in and around Los Angeles County. In a letter sent to municipal officials, he pledged state resources for the probe.
By Wednesday of last week, he’d told CNN that the county had “depleted all of our [water] resources.” In a letter to water management officials days later, he requested information about why the Santa Ynez Reservoir had been closed for repairs and not available for use to assist firefighters.
Water shortages in Los Angeles County were only part of the reason why firefighters had such a tough time battling the three large wildfires in the region. High winds topping out at around 80 mph and starkly dry conditions in the underbrush were the main factors leading to the destruction of more than 10,000 homes and other structures in the area over the past week.
Those winds are due to return tonight, fueling fears that conditions could once again worsen. The wind complicated efforts to deliver water and fire suppression substances by air, while also causing blazes to rapidly spread.
Newsom, in his own interview airing this weekend, said the fires would amount to one of the worst natural disasters in the nation’s history.
“I think it will be in terms of just the costs associated with it in terms of the scale and scope,” he told NBC News.
He also stressed that water shortages in the immediate few days after the fire began were localized and did not reflect regional preparation efforts, taking aim at Vance’s boss Donald Trump over the latter’s own comments about California’s wildfire preparedness.
“I don’t know what [Trump]’s referring to when he talks about the Delta smelt in reservoirs,” said the governor.
“The reservoirs are completely full, the state reservoirs here in Southern California,” he said. “That mis- and disinformation … I don’t think advantages or aids any of us. Responding to Donald Trump’s insults — we would spend another month. I’m very familiar with them. Every elected official that he disagrees with is very familiar with them.”
While Vance did not broach the topic in his interview this weekend, the broader conservative movement has concocted a cartoonish image of California’s government as inept and helpless — a direct result of an imagined artistocracy seemingly made up of LGBT+ people and celebrities.
Los Angeles being home to the American film and television industries has fed into that image, but so did the response of the city’s mayor, Karen Bass — who was in Ghana, attending the inauguration of the African nation’s president, when the crisis began.
Republicans in Congress said this week that disaster relief aid for the California wildfires will come with strings attached, likely to do with demanding standards for wildfire preparedness.
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