1-8-25

Have you ever heard someone say that the cure is worse than the illness?.....the

idea that the medicine, the treatment, the therapy, is more painful or causes

more problems than the illness itself…..it’s not always true, but sometimes it

is…..that’s what we’re seeing right now in California….I don’t know if you’ve been

following the news but there are whole swaths of California that are burning right

now…..go online and look at the videos of people staring out their windows as

walls of raging fire consume their yards and move in on their houses…..this is a big

one….this is a disaster of epic proportions….and the crazy thing is the fires are not

“out there” in the wilderness areas….this is not some remote region of the Big

Sur, or a state park…..this is in places like Pasadena, Pacific Palisades, Malibu…..All

around Los Angeles off-shore winds are driving massive fires…..city blocks,

restaurants and businesses, homes and whole neighborhoods……in Pacific

Palisades, where movie stars and real estate moguls live, over 30,000 people have

been ordered to evacuate…..as of this morning nearly 3000 acres are burning with

zero containment…..more than 10,000 homes are threatened…..throughout the

greater Los Angeles area over 200,000 homes and businesses are without power

right now……for the first time in 20 years the LA Fire Department has called in off

duty firefighters, and the State of Arizona is sending additional fire management

teams to assist……roadways are jammed with abandoned vehicles as people try to

flee the area and crowd the roads making them impassable for evacuations and

for first responders to get through…..A second wildfire broke out last night near

Altadena, north of LA, and over 1000 acres are burning there…..A third fire zone

kicked up near the Sylmar neighborhood of LA and quickly consumed 100s of

acres…..why am I telling you all of this….first of all because this is a human tragedy

and those are our people…..make no mistake….I loathe California politics but I

love California…..I actually lived there for several years and it is truly the Golden

State…..it’s beauty is amazing, its resources, its history…..and it is on fire as we

speak…..but I tell you all of this for a second reason, and that is that this whole

fiasco was largely preventable…..you heard me…..wildfires in California are made

worse because of liberal policies that make it impossible to mitigate the

damage…..make no mistake, fires happen and I get that…..but when you know

how to prevent them, how to mitigate them, how to slow them down, and how to

put them out and you’re not allowed to do that because environmentalist whack

jobs have control of your politics…..well, that’s the height of absurdity…..that’s

the epitome of cutting off your nose to spite your face…..”but we saved the air!

We saved the trees! We conserved our resources!”…..yeah but you burned it all

down to get there!….

Any of you who have ever been in the military know what happens when a

training range comes into contact with an endangered species….God forbid that

troops should walk through the woods at Fort Bragg or Fort Benning (sorry, Fort

Liberty and Fort Moore) and disturb a red-cockaded woodpecker…..training shuts

down and the training lands are closed off for good…..I’ve seen it happen time

and time again…..safety briefings are given to the troops before they conduct unit

movements, or land navigation, to ensure that if they see the special woodpecker,

or a snail darter, or a special tortoise, that they will report it and training comes to

an end…..the same US Army that can defeat its enemies on the battlefield, wreak

destruction on bad guys, can be taken down by a bird or a turtle or a fish…..it’s

true, ask any soldier…..but it is that mindset that is making the tragedy in

California so much more tragic……

In Pacific Palisades yesterday, a beautiful star-studded million dollar community,

the firefighters had to stand and watch in frustration as things burned all around

them because there was no water in the hydrants…..the pressure from the local

reservoir was too low and the water needed to extinguish the flames was not

there…..Rick Caruso, who ran for Mayor of Los Angeles, said that the reservoirs

had not been refilled in a timely manner…..local conservation efforts and liberal

leadership left the reservoir levels dangerously low and the hydrants have been

running dry…..

But the other issue driving the train is the fact that land management is stymied

by red tape and environmental bureaucracy….to effectively manage land and

mitigate potential for fire damage requires going through and purging the

grounds of loose and dry fuel…..cut away dead brush, remove dried downed

trees, make it less likely that a future fire would have enough dry fuel….it doesn’t

mean that you deforest an area, not at all….it means you clean it up so that it

burns less…..but the process of obtaining permission to clear dense lands of fire

fuel can take years to get permission from the red tape environmentalists….they

conduct their studies, they look for endangered species, they fret and wring their

hands and talk about saving whales…..in 2021 10,000 acres of northern spotted

owl habitat went up in smoke in Northern California…..The Forest Service was

well aware that the area was at risk of a wildfire and had a plan to protect it, but

the project was tied up for about a decade by environmental reviews and

objections from environmental activists who, ironically, were concerned about

the owls’ well-being……so they dithered, and fretted, and talked about saving the

earth…..and the owls burned…… These sorts of yearslong delays are becoming all

too common.

My time in sunny California was spent mostly in the community of Laguna

Niguel….a beautiful hillside area with rolling canyons that reached down to the

coast…..my backyard looked out over one of those canyons….it was

gorgeous…..and in 2022 20 homes in my old neighborhood burned to the ground

as a small brush fire was not able to be contained…..dry ground cover fed the fire

and peoples lives were devastated as a result…..

But you add to that situation two other matters that are so easily preventable….in

2018 then President Donald Trump called out California conservation laws which

divert water resources into the ocean…..environmentalists had convinced

politicians and bureaucrats in the Golden State that fish and wildlife were

threatened by allowing the diversion of water for irrigation of farms….as such, a

mitigation of the amounts of water available to fill reservoirs and provide water

to farms and yes, to fire fighting, has been a raging debate in California for several

years…..in one of his mean tweets that made liberal heads explode Trump said

“California wildfires are being magnified & made so much worse by the bad

environmental laws which aren’t allowing massive amount of readily available

water to be properly utilized.”……it was quickly denied and the issue was chalked

up to him being a climate change denier and that he just didn’t understand the

science…..

And then we get to the last one…..the system that had actually sparked so many

of these fires…..Pacific Gas & Electric…..the major supplier of electricity to

Californians…..cited again and again for its aging infrastructure…..they call for rate

increases on a regular basis and yet their system is rife with problems….problems

that have time and again caused the fires that destroyed property and took

lives…..they are being sued right now for a number of fires over recent years…..An

independent investigation found that PG&E has successfully pressured state

regulators over the years to approve their rate hikes while not adequately

maintaining what one report called “aging and rickety equipment”……in 2018

PG&E pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter in the Camp Fire

that burned 154,000 acres, destroyed 18,000 structures and killed 84 people…..it

is one of many fires attributed to PG&E including a fire in May of 2019 which was

sparked by faulty transmission lines from a tower that was 99 years old…..

These are leadership issues…..yes, fires happen…..and they will continue to

happen…..but no, we are not just supposed to take it and assume that nothing

can be done…..leadership has to say “enough is enough” and stop jeopardizing

life, limb and property to save a snail darter, or protect a monopoly power

company that doesn’t want to do what is needed to mitigate danger….

The Golden State is on fire…..let’s pray for our friends in California and hope that

something good can come from this in the end….

And that’s a wrap for the Rightside Way