Gavin Newsom, Karen Bass abandoned LA as it burned – Latest News
A new documentary concerning the Palisades Fire of January exhibits California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) touring the Pacific Palisades as it burns behind them — with a contingent of Los Angeles Fire Department firefighters accompanying them as a substitute of combating the blaze.
The movie, “Paradise Abandoned,” scheduled for release in December, is a reminder that the Palisades Fire will proceed to hang-out Bass as she seeks reelection — and Newsom as he seeks the presidency.
Newsom addressed adoring crowds of Democrats in Houston over the weekend, even choosing up a presidential endorsement or two, although he has not but formally launched his marketing campaign.
He is touting his success in passing Proposition 50 — which gerrymanders California’s congressional districts for Democrats’ advantages — as he casts himself as the chief of the occasion.
But victims of wildfires back home are overtly threatening to tank Newsom’s political prospects except he makes amends.
And any change might already be too late for residents who’ve been pressured to sell their tons as a result of of a lack of help from the state.
“Paradise Abandoned” claims authorities diverted firefighting sources during the fire, which burned over 23,000 acres, destroyed practically 7,000 buildings and killed 12 people.
It notes that even if Pacific Palisades was located in “a region of maximum fire risk” forward of predicted excessive winds Jan. 7, not one further fire truck was deployed to the world.
Residents are proven having slipped previous roadblocks on the second day of the still-burning fire to search out out what occurred to their properties.
They uncover many have burned, with few firefighters in sight.
“The response is so f–king minimal,” one says.
Meanwhile, the movie notes, many fire vehicles have been stationed on the outer perimeter of the fire — or at a command post in a seashore parking zone under the city, the place they served as a backdrop for native officers to stage press conferences.
One resident remembers watching the Chase Bank building catch fire on the second day of the fire and burn utterly via — whereas the governor and mayor toured the world.
“The mayor and the governor were in the middle of town, doing a news conference. And in the background, you see the Chase Bank building burning to the ground. They weren’t doing anything. The whole thing just burned right to the ground, with the mayor and the governor within a block of the place.”
Newsom and Bass are seen flanked by firefighters.
“They weren’t doing anything,” the resident says.
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Another resident who misplaced his home reiterates his disappointment on the obvious lack of help from firefighters.
“You’d think they would have made some sort of effort to try to save this neighborhood, and others,” he says. “And they didn’t come.”
He mentioned a neighbor who tried to alert firefighters on the seashore noticed them eating “breakfast burritos,” and was advised they’d been ordered to “stand down.”
Local firefighters have pushed back towards such claims, explaining that they needed to keep engines in reserve, given the shortage of water, and that the wind — which reached nearly 100 mph atop close by mountains in a single day — was just too sturdy to have stopped the unfold of the blaze.
Many residents have additionally shared tales publicly of firefighters struggling valiantly to save lots of their properties — generally efficiently, typically in useless.
Still, for some locals, who watched fire vehicles drive by as their properties burned, a sense of trust has been shattered.
And many proceed to really feel uncared for by Newsom and Bass, as the politicians attempt to take credit for what they’ve known as “the fastest fire recovery in modern history.”
True, the federal authorities cleared the burned tons in file time — however most nonetheless sit empty.
Many residents blame the state for not forcing insurance coverage firms to pay out and in addition blame native authorities for bureaucratic delays in approving rebuilding permits.
The LA City Council has not even voted to waive allowing charges for fire victims but, regardless of months of guarantees by Mayor Bass.
The Post reported final month that Newsom “nursed a bottle of tequila in his mansion while Los Angeles burned in the Palisades Fire — and pouted that President Trump was blaming him for the devastating blaze.”
“Paradise Abandoned” leaves little room for doubt.
“The people in power made a decision: not incompetence, not an inevitability, but a conscious decision to give up,” it declares.
Joel Pollak is opinion editor at The California Post, a sister publication of The New York Post that launches in early 2026.
