For days, now, the wildfires ravaging Los Angeles have left behind scenes that can only be described as apocalyptic, like something out of Dante’s Inferno. These haunting, powerful images, once the province of print and broadcast media, now circulate freely on social media platforms like X, Facebook, and Instagram. In past emergencies, if you couldn’t find out something in the newspapers or on TV, you had to seek it out yourself; today, news and images spread across the globe in an instant, thanks to citizens documenting disasters in real time.
In neighborhoods across L.A., streets now resemble macabre automotive graveyards, with hundreds of vehicles abandoned by fleeing residents and later bulldozed by fire officials to clear pathways for emergency services. Equestrian owners walk alongside their distressed horses to lead them to safety, their silhouettes framed by whirling embers like sparks from a colossal forge. People evacuate hospital patients on foot, pushing them in their wheelchairs in the dark of night, with only the light of emergency vehicles as a guide. Smoldering and charred rubble is all that remains of once-thriving urban and commercial centers. Single-family neighborhoods have been completely flattened and turned to ash.
Los Angeles feels like ancient Rome set ablaze. The city’s leaders are either conspicuously absent or trying to look important on camera as the city burns. Leading Democratic officials quickly blamed the catastrophe on “climate change,” but thanks to social media, residents are learning daily of the acts of gross negligence that contributed to the devastation.
The fire, which ignited last Tuesday, January 7, grew to catastrophic proportions by evening. Former mayoral candidate Rick Caruso, whose daughter lost her home in Pacific Palisades, was among the first to report that city fire hydrants were dry, leaving firefighters without water and powerless to combat the spreading inferno. Media pundits initially tried to dismiss his claims, but videos posted by X users showed firefighters discussing the dry hydrants, silencing the critics.
As with every natural disaster, state and local politicians have lined up to audition for their next roles, mugging for the cameras and putting on their best tough-yet-compassionate act. Most disaster briefings have become little more than opportunities for these individuals to preen for the public while they thank and praise one another.
But to the shock of the elected elites and their complacent bureaucrats, something is different this time: citizens, armed with instantaneous and continually updated information, are angry—and they’re speaking out against the incompetence of their leaders. In past disasters, people had to rely on what mainstream media told them. Not anymore.
The revolution is not being televised; it is streaming live on X. As L.A. burns, Angelenos have realized that we are the media. That’s devastating news for our city’s incompetent elected officials.
In short order, several important stories have gone viral. Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass came under fire for being in Ghana on a taxpayer-funded junket when the city began burning. For what seemed like the first time in her political career, Bass fielded hostile questions from a reporter asking pointed questions: “Do you owe citizens an apology for being absent while their homes burned? Do you regret slashing the fire department’s budget by millions? Have you nothing to say today?” Bass froze, then walked away in silence.
Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Brian Williams was placed on leave last month and was being investigated by the FBI for making a bomb threat at L.A. City Hall. Given Bass’s trip to Ghana, his absence raises questions about who was in charge as the crisis unfolded.
Mayor Bass faced criticism for slashing the city’s fire department funding by almost $18 million in her latest budget. Despite her attempts to downplay the cuts and deny their severity, a whistleblower leaked an internal memo indicating that, just one week before the wildfires erupted, the mayor had insisted on an additional $49 million reduction, which would have resulted in the closure of 16 fire stations.
L.A. Fire Department Chief Kristin M. Crowley has spoken out against the funding cuts, placing the blame squarely on Mayor Bass. Meantime, posts have gone viral highlighting Crowley’s repeated emphasis on integrating DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) into decision-making across all sectors. It appears that prioritizing fire readiness was not the LAFD’s sole focus. Additionally, Los Angeles City and County officials donated firefighting equipment and vehicles to Ukraine in 2022.
Janisse Quiñones, the chief executive and chief engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, who makes $750,000 a year, bumbled through an explanation of why fire hydrants had run dry. Days later, it was revealed that a 117-million-gallon water-storage reservoir in the Palisades had sat empty for nearly a year pending repairs. In a now-public interview, Quiñones emphasized, “It’s important to me that everything we do is with an equity lens and social justice, making sure we right the wrongs we’ve done in the past.” Were Los Angeles’s department executives, including the mayor, more focused on DEI initiatives than on safeguarding public safety?
A distraught woman who had just lost her home angrily confronted Governor Gavin Newsom. He tried to duck the woman’s questions, telling her that he was “literally talking to the president right now.” When the woman asked if she could hear the call, Newsom was forced to admit, on camera, that he wasn’t “literally” talking to the president, because he didn’t have cell service.
Like a wildfire, the news hits keep growing and spreading. An online petition demanding the immediate resignation of Mayor Bass has received 115,000 verified signatures. The once-solid electoral walls of this deep-blue state may soon catch fire, too. Establishment leaders and the mainstream media aren’t going to save us. It will require active participation and engagement from Los Angelenos with everything at stake. Real change happens in the real world, and never more so than in L.A., right now. Pick up your phone and be part of it.
Top Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images