Woke Goes Up in Smoke

Human civilization began when hunter-gatherers sought to tame the perils of the natural world. Growing crops to improve access to food, building shelters to keep bad weather at bay, digging latrines to improve sanitation, redirecting the flow of water to ensure supply... those were and remain fundamental to any cluster of humans that seek to live above nomadic subsistence. With time, human ingenuity and growing populations found better ways of doing those things and more, to the point where we live safer and more comfortable lives than at any previous time in human history.

Our success in taming Mother Nature's worst impulses does not, however, mean that Mother Nature has been tamed. No, Mother Nature still wants to kill us, on scales small and large. Some people forget this, and are surprised when viruses sicken and kill people, and hurricanes and tornadoes and earthquakes and wildfires destroy the things we build.

"Bad Mama Nature" is no secret. Humans have been contending with Bad Mama as long as we have existed, and a huge part of human progress is due to people investing time and effort into that contending. We build houses designed to better withstand bad weather and shaking ground. We build systems to bring us safe drinking water and take away waste that, left unattended, would sicken and kill us. We build and prepare and stand ready to mitigate both the risk and consequences of fire.

Just as the threat is perpetual, the vigilance and mitigation efforts must similarly be perpetual. Especially as we continue to live and build in places where hurricanes happen, where tornadoes happen, where floods happen, and where wildfires happen.

Unfortunately, as has been quipped, "good times make soft men."

The failures of leadership unmasked by the devastating Los Angeles wildfires serve as stark proof of this aphorism. Even small communities require some sort of management, and we elect representatives (and pay taxes) for that management. That's why we have governors, mayors, police commissioners, fire chiefs, sanitation chiefs, public works chiefs, and complex webs of municipal employees.

Every job that exists requires some degree of decision making and some degree of problem resolution. The more consequential the decisions to be made, the bigger the bucks paid. Those bucks are not always actual dollars - some jobs are taken for the challenge or the satisfaction... or the power or the fame.

This is especially true of public service. Big city mayors don't get CEO pay, even though their jobs are as or more complex and consequential. The satisfaction of serving the public can motivate someone with the chops to make it big in the private sector to seek elected office, and we sometimes get competent leadership as a result. But, and especially when times are good, the "power and fame" motivation draws people who are either incapable or uninterested in doing the hard work, and instead take the job either for its trappings or to further personal agendas.

So, we get failures of leadership in times of crisis. And not just at the top.

Los Angeles County is being ravaged by wildfires driven by strong, dry Santa Ana winds. The winds are a long-known phenomenon, as is the risk they create. Already, areas larger than the island of Manhattan have been burned to the ground, and as I type this, several them are "0% contained."

The finger-pointing is already in full force. As is the blame-shifting. In stark contrast to Harry Truman's "The Buck Stops Here" ethos, seemingly everyone at the top of California's public service heap is deflecting, shrugging helplessness, and saying either "not my job" or "I'm begging for help." Rudy Giuliani was an exemplar of leadership when 9/11 happened, and Mike Bloomberg was as out in front of Superstorm Sandy as one could be. By contrast, California’s governor Gavin Newsom is whinging (or should I say lying?) that he can’t get Joe Biden on the phone (when he’s not bragging about removing a dam that could have provided water for the fire fighting), and LA’s mayor Karen Bass, when she’s not busy refusing help from FDNY firefighters, isn’t answering questions. Both their political futures are now, forgive the pun, toast. “President Newsom” ain’t gonna happen.

What's clear, even at this early stage, is that people saw this coming. What's also clear, even at this early stage, is that "luxury beliefs" overrode the perpetual reality that Mother Nature wants to kill us.

Just a few consequences of luxury beliefs and inadequate planning.

• California has been mismanaging its water for decades. Public works projects designed to ensure greater supply have spent billions but have accomplished nothing due to endless red tape. Envirolunacy that elevates fish over humans has stood in the way of wise management for decades. Massive subsidies for water-intensive crops such as almonds (one almond requires 3.2 gallons of water) and alfalfa means that agriculture sucks up as much as 80% of the drought-prone state’s water - without paying anywhere close to market rates for that water. And even in “wet” times, the infrastructure to get that water to fire-prone areas doesn’t exist. Ah, but there are tens of billions of dollars available for a high speed rail project… which they now tell us needs another hundred billion.

• Management of the perpetually accumulating brush that fuels wildfires is not a mystery, as the misbegotten Smokey Bear zero-tolerance policies of the past taught us. Heck, even native tribes engaged in controlled burns back in the day. Red tape (one report claimed that a particular effort was stalled by five years of environmental reviews), more envirolunacy, and risk aversion (controlled burns were suspended because "what if it goes wrong?” defensiveness) stymied necessary efforts.

• Soft-on-crime policies have likely exacerbated the plague of fire hydrant theft. Hundreds have been stolen in the LA area in the past couple years, probably for scrap salvage. When I bought my house, the first thing my insurance broker asked me was "how close by is the nearest fire hydrant?"

• One report claimed that the mountain pumping stations that feed the city's tanks had lost power due to the fires, but lacked backup generators. This contributed to the low water pressure problem.

Want to dive deeper into the incompetence, dereliction of duty, and inane priorities that set the stage for this disaster? Look here, here, here, and here.

The elephant in this disastrous room? DEI hiring practices. Competence was subordinated to identity politics. While it's still a bit early to judge the actual level of incompetence in the response to the fires, as opposed to how much blame prior bad decisions and bureaucratic inertia deserve, the culture that comes with a DEI-first mindset is certainly culpable. Worth a read is this bit by a friend and fellow blogger on firefighter physical standards.

Recall my mention of the trappings of office being a lure? Mayor Bass was warned of a heightened probability of wildfires, but opted to stick to her plans to travel to Ghana as part of a delegation sent by Biden to attend that nation's Presidential inauguration. After the fires broke out, her aides insisted that she was managing everything remotely, of course. The "blowing smoke up our asses" cliche is sadly apt.

Meanwhile, LA's fire department has been spending money on DEI. While the sum isn't huge (a bit under $2M out of an $820M annual budget), the cultural mindset this spending reveals is what matters. Yes, a $17M budget cut and the shipment of "excess" materiel to Ukraine also warrant a mention, but bad priorities and practices, rather than dollars, are the real culprits. Most government entities have enough money to do their jobs if that money is well managed. If you worry more about a diverse workforce than about preparing for and mitigating wildfires, you are doing it wrong.

I could fill pages with further deconstructions, but the point is made. This devastation in LA is the result of bad governance, twisted priorities, and politicians who give far too little care to the nuts and bolts of their jobs.

Will the voters of California punish those who failed to do their jobs? I hope so, but I'm not optimistic. Most party-line voters would rather chew hot asphalt than repudiate their team, and once the smoke clears (yes, I'm loading up on cliches) there will be a whole lot of rationalizing and mislaid blame (no, Virginia, these fires are not due to global warming - but even if they are, or our Best-and-Brightest believe they are, more attention and more mitigation would be called for) used to justify voting for more of the same.

The devastation that thousands have already suffered, and that thousands more will suffer, is a terrible tragedy, and my heart goes out to everyone affected. The lessons this disaster teaches are as important as our sympathy, and we must heed them if we are to reduce the harm from the next wave of wildfires. For, sure as the sun rises, there will be a next wave. Mother Nature is relentless, and we need to be just as relentless.