Wildfires supercharged by hurricane-level winds continue to rip through Los Angeles, destroying everything in their path.
As of now, the fires are still mostly uncontained, and yet, already the Palisades fire has been declared the most destructive conflagration in L.A. history. Homes, monuments, businesses, and schools have burned to the ground. Five people have been killed, and the death toll is expected to rise.
Authorities say there’s no end in sight.
“Blaze News Tonight’s” Jill Savage and Matthew Peterson interview Blaze News managing editor for Align Matt Himes, who’s an L.A. resident, about what he’s seen and experienced so far.
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The day the fires began, Matt was headed home midmorning when he saw a “big plume of black smoke” that was “very close.”
Even though he’s used to wildfires, he knew immediately that this was different.
“Then I got the call to pick up my son from the school, which is about a mile from where I live, and in the parking lot … it was fairly chaotic,” he says, adding that “people were running” and “grabbing their kids in a panic.”
He and his son had to fight the multiplying traffic of evacuees to get back home and gather a few things before fleeing themselves.
“Traffic-wise, organizationally, the Palisades was fairly chaotic. I don’t think they were ready to handle this,” he tells Jill and Matthew.
Currently, Matt and his family are staying with friends. He doesn’t know whether or not his house survived the flames.
While he doesn’t want to politicize the tragedy Los Angeles is experiencing, Matt can’t ignore the signs — and they all point to this: “Los Angeles was really not prepared.”
For starters, Mayor Karen Bass, privy to the serious weather reports and warnings, decided to move forward with her diplomatic trip to Ghana. When the Pacific Palisades went up in flames, Bass was 7,000 miles away.
While the left is doing what it always does every time natural disaster strikes — blaming climate change — Matt argues it has far more to do with failed forestry management, the out-of-control homeless population, and reduced funding for the fire department.
On top of that, “there’s no water in these hydrants.”
“That has to do with filling the reservoirs,” says Matt, adding that it seems like there’s an insufficient number of firefighters.
The ones who are currently doing everything in their power to literally push back the flames are “overwhelmed,” he says.
Further, L.A.’s current fire chief is a woman named Kristin M. Crowley, who is celebrated as “the first female and the first LGBTQ fire chief of L.A.”
“When you look at her bio on the site, she’s talking about her priorities. They’re all about diversity and equity and inclusion,” says Matt. “That just seems to me like the wrong priorities when we have all these glaring inefficiencies right now that are hampering us from helping with this situation” — a situation he calls “devastating” and “apocalyptic.”
To hear more of the story, watch the episode above.
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