Why California should fear next disaster — and – Latest News
I used to be standing in a burned-out canyon exterior San Diego in October 2003 once I discovered what disaster management was actually all about.
I used to be the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). You hadn’t heard of me but.
But perhaps you keep in mind the Cedar Fire. It burned over 270,000 acres and over 2,800 buildings. At the time, it was “the largest and most damaging wildfire in California’s history.”
Sign up for the California Morning Report e-newsletter
The greatest information, opinion and tradition shaping California proper now.
Thanks for signing up!
A girl I had by no means met was crying in my arms. She had simply been let back into her neighborhood to see what was left of her home, which was the inspiration and chimney. More than 350 houses on that hillside have been gone, burned to the ground.
Back in Washington, people have been sitting in conferences. The White House was shaking up the new Department of Homeland Security. I wasn’t there for the drama. I used to be not in that room. I couldn’t be.
I discovered later that just one official was singled out by identify for doing their job. Me.
The motive given was that I used to be in California working the wildfires whereas everybody else sat in Washington.
A fireline within the Cedar Fire makes its means down a hill close to a Walmart on Monday, Oct. 27, 2003. Getty Images
I used to be recommended for being absent. For doing the precise job as a substitute of attending the assembly in regards to the job.
Two years, later Hurricane Katrina made landfall. You know how that turned out for me.
President Bush instructed the nation I used to be doing “a heck of a job.” The nation checked out Katrina and got here to a completely different conclusion.
You discovered my identify the exhausting means. I own each bit of it.
But Washington by no means says one thing out loud that I would like you to listen to.
The federal authorities doesn’t put out your fire. FEMA doesn’t knock in your door at 2 a.m. and let you know to evacuate.
Dry trees and brush burn as firecrews attempt to control the Cedar Fire, Oct. 27, 2003. Getty Images
Disasters are answered from the underside up. Your metropolis. Your county. Your state. The firefighter, the sheriff’s deputy, the water within the hydrant, the alert in your cellphone.
Those are the primary responders. Washington writes the checks and flies in to help coordinate. The people who save your life and shield your property are native.
Which is why California should be frightened of how its own home is at the moment run.
Look at January 2025. In Pacific Palisades, a 117-million-gallon reservoir sat empty for practically a 12 months, out of service for repairs, whereas the fire ran downhill towards the Pacific. The hydrants went dry.
Investigators later concluded the town’s water system was by no means constructed to combat a firestorm that measurement. That isn’t an excuse. That is the indictment.
Firefighters battle the Palisades Fire because it burns during a windstorm on the west facet of Los Angeles. REUTERS
In Altadena, LA County’s own after-action review discovered that on the west facet of city, the place all of the Eaton Fire’s deaths occurred, the evacuation alerts got here hours late or by no means got here in any respect. People died on the facet of the road.
And the mayor of LA was in Ghana when her metropolis caught fire. She later admitted the journey was a mistake. It was.
Twenty-two years separate that lady in crying in my arms from the households sifting the ash of Palisades and Altadena, however the story is identical.
In 2003, California requested Washington for money to combat the beetles killing its forests, bought instructed no on a Friday, and watched the hills ignite that weekend. Everyone besides the firefighters reached for politics earlier than they reached for a firehose.
In 2025, the reservoir sat empty and the telephones stayed silent. Fire season comes yearly virtually on schedule, virtually at all times. And a era of governors, mayors, county supervisors and metropolis councils, of each events, nonetheless act amazed when the fires come screaming down the hillside.
Thousands of burned properties are seen in an aerial view following the Eaton fire within the Altadena. AFP through Getty Images
Here is what should keep each Californian up at night time.
Mother Nature has more than one transfer. Forecasters are warning of a highly effective El Niño this winter, the sort that shoves the tides up and the water in. The similar state that would not keep its hydrants full in January may very well be bailing out coastal neighborhoods by spring.
Fire and flood, in several counties, pulling on the identical overstretched, over-politicized response. The org chart won’t save anybody. Neither will one other job power, or a mayor’s apology from the airport.
Somebody should be within the canyon, not within the convention room. Somebody should be on the seashore earlier than the tide takes the primary home. Preparedness is the boring, unglamorous work a native authorities does earlier than the wind comes up.
That is the work no person calls a press convention to announce. California retains electing people who would moderately call the press convention.
You can change that. But you don’t get many possibilities.
This 12 months is one of these possibilities. Whom do you trust to show up in that canyon?
Michael Brown was the primary underneath secretary of Homeland Security for emergency preparedness and response underneath President George W. Bush, and the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
