Rick Caruso Slams LA Leaders Over Pacific Palisades Fire, Fire Hydrants Run Dry [WATCH]

Rick Caruso, the billionaire developer and former Los Angeles mayoral candidate, didn’t mince words as he blasted the city’s handling of the Pacific Palisades fire. As flames devoured multi-million-dollar homes, Caruso described the city’s failure to provide adequate water to firefighters as nothing short of catastrophic, as reported by Fox News.

“There’s no water in the Palisades. There’s no water coming out of the fire hydrants,” Caruso told Fox11 Los Angeles. “This is absolute mismanagement by the city. Not the firefighters’ fault, but the city’s.”

Caruso, who ran against Karen Bass for mayor in 2022, criticized the current leadership for being unprepared in the face of disaster. “We have got a mayor that is out of the country, and we have got a city that is burning, and there are no resources to put out fires. It looks like we’re in a third-world country here,” he said.

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At the time of the fire, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was on a pre-planned trip to Africa but has since returned to California. Meanwhile, residents and firefighters in Pacific Palisades grappled with a dire water shortage that left hydrants dry during critical hours.

Janisse Quiñones, chief executive of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP), explained that the fire hydrants went completely dry by 3 a.m. on Wednesday. “We had a tremendous demand on our system in the Palisades,” Quiñones said, as reported by the Los Angeles Times.

“Four times the normal demand was seen for 15 hours straight, which lowered our water pressure.”

Caruso argued that the issue wasn’t a lack of rain but decades of negligence in maintaining brush and other fire-prone areas. “Who’s paying the price are all of these people and their homes,” he said.

Caruso, a former DWP commissioner and owner of the Palisades Village shopping center, pointed to aging infrastructure and chronic mismanagement as root causes of the crisis. “This is a window into a systemic problem of the city — not only of mismanagement, but our infrastructure is old,” Caruso said.

The developer recounted evacuating his own home in Brentwood while flames destroyed his daughter’s residence and threatened another family member’s property. Around his shopping center, homes were “fully engulfed” in flames, and the mall sustained damage.

Los Angeles City Councilmember Traci Park also voiced frustration, highlighting the city’s lack of investment in public safety and infrastructure.

“The chronic under-investment in the city of Los Angeles in our public infrastructure and our public safety partners was evident and on full display over the last 24 hours,” Park said during a press conference. “I’m extremely concerned about this. I think we’ve got more questions than answers at this point.”

As the embers cool, Caruso’s comments serve as a stark reminder of the city’s dire need for competent leadership and better resource management. With lives and properties at stake, the cost of inaction is becoming impossible to ignore.