Dead wood — from City Hall to Sacramento

Karen Bass and Gavin Newsom want to blame climate change for the infernos that tore through Pacific Palisades and Altadena in January 2025.

These were acts of a vengeful, unpredictable climate. Monsters born of global warming that no human hand could have stayed. So they say.

It is a lie. A convenient, curated, political lie designed to shield the incompetent and the corrupt from the consequences of their own misgovernance.

Newsom has also blamed an arsonist for the Palisades Fire. Yes, the first fire, the Lachman Fire, was set last Jan. 1 by a human being — one obsessed with climate change.

But there was nothing “unprecedented” about the Los Angeles fires. We have seen this movie many times before: the Woolsey Fire, the Kincade Fire, the Park Fire, and more.  

The Santa Ana winds have scoured the state for as long as the Pacific has kissed the coast; they are as native to California as the oak trees. 

To blame “climate change” for the predictable winds that whip through our passes is an insult to history and a dereliction of duty. We even knew exactly when the winds were coming. 

So while climate and drought and arson influence fire risk, what turned a forecast wind event into a mass-casualty disaster wasn’t carbon dioxide. It was poor governance. 

If you knew the winds were coming, why weren’t city and state resources pre-positioned? Why weren’t command centers established? Why wasn’t staffing maximized? 

Why was the mayor of an American city on a diplomatic trip to West Africa, instead of handling all of the above?

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The Lachman Fire was a small, manageable blaze. It was “extinguished.” Or so we were told. 

But when firefighters attempted to overhaul the site to dig deep, turn the soil, and ensure every ember was dead, they were reportedly hamstrung by bureaucracy. 

Why? To protect an indigenous weed. 

Crews were allegedly restricted in their ability to bring in heavy equipment or disturb the soil in “avoidance areas” because California has prioritized the “environmental sanctity” of a milkvetch plant over the safety of thousands of residents, their homes, their livelihoods, and their pets.

So, the fire smoldered. It waited. And when the predicted winds arrived six days later, the flames roared back to life as the Palisades Fire. 

This wasn’t nature’s fury; it was a bureaucratic rekindling.

Then came the water failures.  

In 2014, voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 1, authorizing billions of dollars for new water storage. 

More than a decade later, we are still drowning in feasibility studies and permitting hell, with not a single major drop of new storage to show for it. 

Worse, the Santa Ynez Reservoir, situated perfectly uphill from the Palisades, capable of gravity-feeding water without the need for vulnerable electric pumps, was empty. “Repairs,” they said. 

The state’s own reports now try to gaslight us, claiming a full reservoir “wouldn’t have made a difference” due to water-pressure physics.

That explanation doesn’t absolve anyone.  It indicts the entire system.  

If your firefighting infrastructure can’t deliver adequate pressure during a predictable wind-driven emergency, then your system isn’t resilient. It’s ornamental. And nothing was done to remedy it.

Then there is the horror of Altadena, and the Eaton Fire. We are hearing reports of “zombie power lines” — decommissioned infrastructure re-energized by contact with live wires in the wind. 

This is the same story as the Woolsey and Camp fires of 2018.

Why does this infrastructure remain? 

Because the utility companies, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) and Southern California Edison (SCE), are not treated as public servants, but as protected donors.

Newsom has accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from the utility giants. In return, we got AB 1054, a legislative bailout that shields these monopolies from full liability — while Newsom vetoed forestry management bills, choosing to let the fuel stack up in our canyons.

And when the ashes settled in LA, what did Mayor Bass do? Did she demand accountability? No. She demanded an eraser. 

The California Post has reported that Bass’s office watered down the LA Fire Department’s after-action report to shift blame away from city leaders and onto rank-and-file firefighters. Her staff want to avoid the fact that firefighters begged for more funding for months, only to be ignored. 

If we continue to shrug and say, “That’s just California,” we’re signing our own eviction notices and, in some cases, our death certificates. 

We are doomed to be ruled by idiots who can’t manage a reservoir and monsters who will let your house burn to line their campaign coffers. 

This isn’t about left versus right. It’s about competence versus collapse. 

Because when leadership refuses to prepare, when bureaucracy overrides common sense, and when political protection replaces accountability, disasters stop being natural. They become engineered.

The smoke may have cleared from Palisades and Altadena. But the brush in Sacramento and City Hall is overdue for removal.

Jillian Michaels is a health advocate, entrepreneur, and bestselling author whose work sits at the intersection of wellness and consumer empowerment.