"I Live in Pacific Palisades and I Know Who Caused the Fire
It is prima facie negligence by City leaders
By James Breslo, January 12, 2025 6:00 pm
As officials investigate what caused Los Angeles’ devasting fires, I know the answer. It was the homeless. The LA Fire Department reports that 54% of fires in 2023 were started by homeless. They responded to almost 14,000 fires that year alone related to homelessness!
Regardless of whether the Pacific Palisades fire was directly started by a homeless person, the extent of the destruction from the fire can be attributed to the homeless. A few months ago, a LA City Council person reported to me that she spends 80 percent of her time on LA’s homeless problem. Eighty percent! That does not leave much time to focus on the basic needs of the average tax paying LA resident, such as water, power, sanitation, safety, security, roads, sidewalks, traffic, parks, beaches, schools, firefighting and fire prevention. And when the mayor feels free to jet off to Ghana for a presidential inauguration on the other side of the globe, we cannot assume the other twenty percent of time is well spent.
In addition, the Council passed a budget for this year providing $1.3 Billion for homeless-related expenses. The same budget cut spending on the fire department by $17 million!
If the Council was focused on what it should have been, it likely would have known that the main reservoir needed to fight fires in Pacific Palisades was under repair and unavailable to provide water to fight fires in the middle of the Santa Ana winds fire season. Firefighters had access to only 3 million gallons of water which ran out on the first night of fires. The reservoir normally contains 117 million gallons of water! None was available. "
californiaglobe.com
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