The president-elect sought to blame the climate-change-exacerbated crisis in Southern California on the state’s water management. Experts disputed his claims.
By Hannah Knowles, Brianna Tuckerand and Marianne LeVine
President-elect Donald Trump and California Gov. Gavin Newsom clashed Wednesday over fires burning out of control in the Los Angeles area, injecting national politics into a growing crisis in the city that Vice President Kamala Harris calls home and that President Joe Biden was visiting for the birth of his great-grandson.
During a news conference Tuesday, Newsom had urged Trump not to
“play any politics” during the
“precious moments that we have to evacuate.”
But as the fires forced tens of thousands of people to leave their homes and left at least five dead Wednesday, Trump sought to pin the catastrophe on Democratic governance, blaming Newsom’s water management decisions for the fires — an idea that water experts strongly disputed — and noting that some fire hydrants had run dry amid huge demand.
“A true disaster!” Trump wrote in a post on his social network, Truth Social.
The president-elect’s attacks on Newsom echoed the feuds over disaster response that marked his first term and signaled that he will continue to eagerly criticize Democratic officials during natural disasters in their jurisdictions. Trump also blamed Newsom for wildfires during his first term, suggesting that California should have “raked” its forests better. At the time, Newsom criticized Trump’s skepticism of climate change, which has exacerbated the frequency and severity of many natural disasters, including wildfires.
On the campaign trail this year, Trump spread misinformation about the government response to Hurricane Helene and threatened to withhold federal aid from California unless the state changed how it manages water.
Trump’s comments Wednesday took a similar tone. He wrote on Truth Social that Newsom had refused to sign a “water restoration declaration” that would have diverted more water to the region. A Newsom spokesperson responded that no such document existed and said that the governor is “focused on protecting people, not playing politics, and making sure firefighters have all the resources they need.”
Asked to elaborate on Trump’s charges, Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt pointed to a 2020 memorandum he signed meant to direct more water to Southern and Central California. California sued to block that effort, arguing that it could harm endangered species and was not scientifically justified.
Trump’s contention that Newsom’s water management decisions were to blame for the severity of the fires is not supported by the facts, multiple water experts told The Washington Post.
“There is no relationship between federal and state water management and the intensity of these fires or the ability of people to fight these fires,” said Jeffrey Mount, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan think tank. Instead, he said, lack of rain and severe winds created dangerous conditions.
“Right now Southern California has ample water supplies, their reservoirs are full — they’re well above historical averages. They do a very good job of managing water. There is no shortage of water in Southern California, that’s just not true,” Mount added.
He said some hydrants are running dry not because the region ran out of water, but because pressure drops with high demand, making it harder to move water around.
Los Angeles’ vegetation, which is highly flammable, exacerbates the problems caused by dry conditions and high winds, said Matthew Hurteau, a forestry vegetation expert and professor at the University of New Mexico.
“It’s really unfortunate when these sorts of events get politicized because this isn’t politics,” Hurteau added.
Los Angeles officials have acknowledged that the four active blazes — two of which have grown to more than 10,000 acres — are overwhelming their resources.
The White House said in a statement Wednesday that the Biden administration “has been in constant communication” with Newsom and local officials about the fires and that the federal government was sending resources, including large air tankers that can carry up to 4,000 gallons of water. Biden also directed the Defense Department to help.
“We’re doing anything and everything and as long as it takes to contain these fires,” Biden said during an appearance in the Los Angeles area, where he and his family visited Cedars-Sinai Medical Center for the birth of granddaughter Naomi Biden’s child. He added later, “It’s going to be a hell of a long way.”
Harris, whose home in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles was under evacuation orders, was in Washington on Wednesday but released a statement saying she had been briefed on the fires and the efforts to contain them.
Trump wasn’t the only politician with harsh criticism of incumbent Democrats. Rick Caruso, the billionaire businessman and losing candidate in the November 2022 Los Angeles mayoral election, also denounced the lack of water in fire hydrants.
“This is an absolute mismanagement by the city. Not the firefighters’ fault, but the city,” Caruso told Fox 11 Los Angeles.
Trump’s allies also zeroed in on Democratic Mayor Karen Bass’s absence from the city when the fires broke out. Bass, who was part of a presidential delegation to Ghana but has since returned to California, said Wednesday that she spoke with Biden and “discussed an urgent path forward towards recovery for the thousands of families impacted.”
Many politicians stuck to expressing their concern for the people affected by the fires. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — a Republican who has sparred in the past with Newsom and criticized his blue-state policies — wrote on X that Florida had offered help and that “when disaster strikes, we must come together to help our fellow Americans in any way we can.”
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