(Daily Signal)—Years of policy failures, bookended by insufficient preparation in the days leading up to the California wildfires, laid the groundwork for historic destruction, former California state Rep. Mike Gatto says.
“When the history of these fires are written, people will conclude that it was 25% the weather and 75% incompetence and poor management,” the Democratic ex-lawmaker told The Daily Signal at his Palos Verdes, Calif., home.
The fires resulted from a perfect storm of strong winds, overgrown brush, and dry conditions due to a lack of rain for nine months, Gatto said, but poor preparation and slow reaction time from local, city, and state officials, among them Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom, allowed the fire to reach such devastating proportions.
More than 12,000 homes, businesses, schools, and other structures have been destroyed since the fires ignited on Jan. 7. More than 40,000 acres have burned, and at least 24 people have died.
“They just were slow to realize the magnitude and scope and severity of these fires, which resulted in delayed reactions to do certain things,” Gatto said, “whether it’s dispatching certain personnel or making certain requests for different governments to help California.”
Gatto served in the California legislature as a Democrat from 2010 to 2016. He now practices law and serves as a captain in the California Guard.
Part of Gatto’s former district burned in the Eaton fire. He said more than 200 of his and wife’s friends lost their homes.
He criticized elected leaders for dodging responsibility for failures related to the wildfires. While the weather and lack of precipitation is out of anyone’s control, Gatto said people such as Newsom and Bass fail to recognize that “the buck stops with them,” as former President Harry Truman once said.
“I believe in a conception of a government where you do try to take responsibility for the things in your control,” he said. “And those things include everything from response time to making sure that the region is prepared to informing the public of evacuation routes.”
On Jan. 3, four days before the fires started, the National Weather Service issued a warning of a “life-threatening, destructive, widespread windstorm” the afternoon of Tuesday, Jan. 7. Yet Southern California was ill-prepared for the fires.
“When you think about the four days’ warning that we had, I think the question should not be, ‘Gee, how do these different leaders blame other people?’” he said. “But the question for those leaders would be, ‘What would you have done differently during those four days?’”
In hindsight, the government should have posted personnel at evacuation routes, dropped proactive fire retardant on buildings, and removed highly flammable dry brush prior to the fires, he said.
“This is not about Democrats or Republicans,” Gatto said. “This is not about scoring political points. This is about telling the truth. This is about making sure that our society learns from the mistakes that we made, so that this type of thing never happens again.”
The public is desperate for answers about the past week’s epic losses of life and property, but elected officials grandstand through press conferences while those most affected don’t even have the electric power or internet service to tune in.
“It’s not about scoring points. It’s not about showing up at a fire scene and trying to make it look like you care,” Gatto said. “It’s about making the hard decisions about what we need to do as a California society to improve things so that I don’t have to hear about 200 friends of mine who have lost their homes.”
Californians are angry about the crime rates, homelessness crisis, and wildfire management, he said.
“I don’t know if that is going to spark a change with the voters, with the electorate,” he said. “One would have thought that we were starting to see some of that anger in the 2024 elections. So it’s entirely possible that this anger does bleed into 2025.”
Lenient penalties instilled confidence in the criminals who have committed arson, worsening the fires, and looted evacuated homes, Gatto said. Two have been arrested and charged with arson near the wildfires.
“Is it possible that our lenient laws and our lack of ability to do something about the homelessness problem has contributed to these fires?” Gatto mused. “And I think if we’re looking in the mirror, and we’re answering honestly, the answer has to be yes.”
The laws on looting and theft in California have been weak for the past decade, Gatto said, giving criminals the message that such crimes would be tolerated. Though the laws were recently changed, it takes a while for criminals to get the message that crime is unacceptable.
The political angles on the fires are heartbreaking for the former lawmaker and don’t help a grieving public, he said.
“I saw [Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.] tweet that these fires were a reason why climate change, blah, blah, blah,” he said. “I mean, this basin has burned since before there were cars. And one of the worst wildfires was in the 1960s, before people talked about the concept of climate change.”
“The question for officials is, ‘What are you going to do about it?’” he said. “Climate change is not an excuse. It is not something that absolves our officials from good planning and good execution. So, I get very upset when I see people from either side of the aisle use these fires as a way to score political points.”
The scarcity of clean water for wildfire victims is a highlight of the past week’s failures, Gatto said.
“It makes me feel like we’re living in a Third World country,” he said. “My friends in the Altadena area were told that they could not drink their tap water, even if they boiled it, that their tap water was so dangerous that they could not even shower in it.”
While many were able to drive to nearby cities to buy bottled water, elderly people and poor people who don’t have cars couldn’t access drinkable water.
“People did not have drinking water in 2025, in the biggest and wealthiest city in California,” he said. “That is something that to me is just really, really hard for me to accept.”
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