The wildfires ravaging Los Angeles have spotlighted California Governor Gavin Newsom’s “terrible” record on forest management, which critics say has turned parts of the city into an apocalyptic hellscape.
Wildfires swept through the LA area with devastating force on Wednesday, forcing thousands of terrified residents, including Hollywood celebrities, to flee their homes, many escaping through flames, ferocious winds and clouds of smoke.
As firefighters battled fires in the city and Newsom declared a state of emergency in the Pacific Palisades area, the Democratic governor faced renewed scrutiny over his record on land management.
The governor, widely seen as a potential Democratic presidential candidate in 2028, has faced repeated criticism for his land management policies, which have seen seasonal fires ravage the Golden State during his time in office.
Investigations by California-based media outlets have repeatedly condemned Newsom for failing to deliver on his promises to revamp the state’s wildfire strategy when he took office in 2019.
He is accused of overestimating his performance and taking much-needed funding from the fire safety and land management sectors as flammable fuel piled up to dangerous levels.
Newsom’s office did not immediately respond to DailyMail.com’s request for comment.
An investigation by CapRadio and NPR’s California Newsroom found that Newsom had failed to fulfill the promise of the executive order he signed on his first day in office in January 2019 aimed at revamping the state’s wildfire strategy.
California Governor Gavin Newsom watches as a fast-moving wildfire engulfs luxury homes in Los Angeles
Newsom is accused of neglecting the types of land management that keep fires from starting
Those media accused him in 2021 of misrepresenting his achievements and even diverting the money from wildfire prevention.
They found Newsom overestimated by as much as 690 percent the number of acres treated with fuel cuts and prescribed burns in the areas he said should be prioritized.
Newsom had claimed that 35 “priority projects,” implemented as a result of his 2019 executive order, resulted in fire prevention work on 90,000 acres of land.
But the state’s own data showed the actual number was only 11,399 — about seven times less.
The amount of flammable fuel that Cal Fire removed from the land increased in Newsom’s first year but fell by half in 2020, the study found.
At the same time, he cut Cal Fire’s wildfire prevention budget by about $150 million.
Californians who survived the fires told the media how they felt betrayed by Newsom and other officials, saying he was more interested in photo ops than saving homes and businesses from fires.
“It’s a hoax,” said Mitch Mackenzie, who lost his home in the 2017 Tubbs Fire and whose Santa Rosa winery was hurt by reduced harvests.
“With all the fire hazards that we’ve experienced year after year, after year … you would think it would be a higher priority to make sure this entire area is treated as much as possible,” Mackenzie said.
Politicians “always want to look good when it comes to solving the problem, but they never really do,” he added.
Across the state, residents have complained that promised fire safety features, such as emergency access roads that could help them escape a blaze, had not been completed.
Breanna Morello, a right-wing internet personality, posted a photo of Newsom looking at burning houses on Wednesday and said he “admired all his hard work after deliberately neglecting forest management.”
Newsom, she added, was too focused on the “globalist climate change agenda.”
Newsom is widely seen as a potential Democratic presidential candidate in 2028
Governor Gavin Newsom visits a home destroyed in the 2019 Kincade fire as he vowed to restart the state’s response to fires
Others shared old tweets from Donald Trump, who as president in 2019 criticized Newsom for doing a “terrible job of forest management” and failing to clear forested areas that could lead to fires.
“I told him from the first day we met that he had to ‘clean up’ his forest floors, no matter what his bosses, the environmentalists, DEMAND of him,” Trump wrote.
“Burns should also be applied and firestops cut,” he added, referring to overlooked forest management policies.
The claims show a division between some conservatives, who see wildfires as a land management issue, and others, who attribute the fires to climate change and seek tighter limits on planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.
Blame for the LA wildfires has also been hurled at the city’s embattled mayor, Karen Bass, who cut a whopping $17.6 million from the LA Fire Department budget this fiscal year.
Initially, she had wanted to cut the fire department even further: as much as $23 million.
Bass also faced backlash for being off duty during a time of crisis. She was reportedly in Africa for the inauguration of the Ghanaian president as fires turned parts of her city into a terrifying hellscape.
The criticism roiled California Democratic leaders as thousands of firefighters battled at least three separate blazes in the LA metropolitan area, from the Pacific coast inland to Pasadena.
LAFD put out a plea for off-duty firefighters to help, and weather conditions were too windy to fly firefighting planes, further hampering the fight.
Images of the overnight destruction showed luxury homes collapsed in a whirlwind of flaming embers.
LA Mayor Karen Bass is also under fire for cutting the LA Fire Department budget by a whopping $17.6 million this year
The flames that broke out Tuesday night near a nature preserve in the foothills northeast of LA spread so quickly that staff at a senior center had to push dozens of residents in wheelchairs and hospital beds onto the street to a parking lot.
Residents – one as old as 102 – waited in their bedding as embers fell around them until ambulances, buses and construction vans arrived to take them to safety.
Another fire that started hours earlier swept through the city’s Pacific Palisades neighborhood, a hilly coastal area dotted with celebrity homes.
Hollywood stars such as Mark Hamill, Mandy Moore and James Woods were among those affected.
In the race to reach safety, roads became impassable as dozens of people abandoned their vehicles and fled on foot, some with suitcases.
“This is a very dangerous storm that poses extreme fire danger – and we are not out of the woods yet,” Newsom said in a statement.
“We are already seeing the devastating effects of this fire in Pacific Palisades, which grew rapidly within minutes.”