TLDR: The people charged with protecting Los Angeles from becoming a burning wasteland covered in ashes, cracked asphalt, homeless people in tents, and fentanyl-laced needles utterly failed. 

OK, you know all that already, but there is still a point to reading the article. It's important to get it through our heads that you should NEVER, under any circumstances, let progressives anywhere near power. They aren't just useless; their destructiveness rivals that of Skynet. 

The Los Angeles Times has a new bombshell report that will knock your socks off.

Top LAFD commanders decided not to assign for emergency deployment roughly 1,000 available firefighters and dozens of water-carrying engines in advance of the Palidades fire. @PringleLATimes @AleneTchek @dakotacdsmith https://t.co/oO38MTEOkC

— Shelby Grad (@shelbygrad) January 15, 2025

Despite the warnings--which were near hysterical--from NOAA that the fire danger in Los Angeles was extreme, the powers that be in the city decided that pre-deploying firefighters and equipment to quickly extinguish fires before they spread was an unnecessary precaution. 

You can't make it up. They contemplated the move, but decided...nah, it's too much work. 

As the Los Angeles Fire Department faced extraordinary warnings of life-threatening winds, top commanders decided not to assign for emergency deployment roughly 1,000 available firefighters and dozens of water-carrying engines in advance of the fire that destroyed much of the Pacific Palisades and continues to burn, interviews and internal LAFD records show.

Fire officials chose not to order the firefighters to remain on duty for a second shift last Tuesday as the winds were building — which would have doubled the personnel on hand — and staffed just five of more than 40 engines that are available to aid in battling wildfires, according to the records obtained by The Times, as well as interviews with LAFD officials and former chiefs with knowledge of city operations.

The department only started calling up more firefighters and deploying those additional engines after the Palisades blaze was burning out of control.

Overtime. It costs money, and why spend money when you don't need to? There are DEI seminars to conduct. 

The Times’ findings come as LAFD officials continue to assert that the firefighting effort was hampered by cuts in the department’s budget and low water levels for some fire hydrants. They only acknowledged their decisions not to assign more firefighters or pre-position more of the available engines after The Times presented them with internal documents describing the department’s actions.

Fire Chief Kristin Crowley defended her agency’s decisions, saying that commanders had to be strategic with limited resources while continuing to handle regular 911 calls. She said the number of calls doubled Tuesday from a typical day, to 3,000 at the LAFD’s 106 fire stations, as the high winds downed trees and power lines.

You can't make this up. 

Over the past several days, Crowley and other officials have given The Times varying accounts of how many engines were available to supplement regular deployments. An internal planning document obtained by The Times from a source showed that the department said “no” to deploying an additional nine engines, known as “ready reserve” engines, to fire-prone areas. Those are different from the nine engines that were pre-positioned in the Valley and Hollywood.

Crowley initially told The Times that most of the ready reserve engines were inoperable or otherwise unavailable. Later, however, a spokesperson for Crowley said just four of the nine were not immediately available. A third official then produced a document that said seven were put into service at one point or another — most of them after the fire ignited.

Other engines from the group of more than 40 could have been tapped in place of disabled ready reserve ones, Crawford and other sources told The Times.

Of course, it's not just the higher-ups in the Fire Department who shoulder the blame. As has been much-discussed, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass was yucking it up in Ghana swilling what was no doubt some premium cocktails, and her Deputy Mayor was drowning his sorrows in some beer after having his home raided by the FBI and being suspended. 

Michael Shellenberger gives a very thorough and fair analysis of all of the failures that took place in Los Angeles. Additionally, he describes a whistleblower who came forward to detail just how unprepared the fire department and the city of LA was to combat the fires. Must… pic.twitter.com/Ill9KUxD0x

— Insurrection Barbie (@DefiyantlyFree) January 15, 2025

You could argue that this didn't matter in any case; Karen Bass is, if anything, less competent than a senile, pudding-brained Biden and her Deputy would have been plotting some criminal activity. But that is the point: nobody had their eye on the ball. More often than not a position at the top of any Progressive-run organization is focused on remaking society, not protecting it. 

As NOAA officials were putting out warnings that sounded almost scary enough to make you think a nuclear attack was imminent, city officials were focused on important issues like which gin was in the cocktails they were being served, and were the available wines from California, Chile, or France?

The underlying problem has little to do with the particular personnel put in charge, as culpable as they individually are. It is a systemic problem inherent in progressive politics. It's why communism can't work, why socialism always fails, and why all progressive politics always devolves into some form of tyranny: running things well isn't the point: it's grabbing power and using it for others into complying with the ideological demands of the people at the top. 

It is within the realm of possibility that a particular bureaucrat could be competent, but even in the best circumstances the system doesn't select for that. And chances are that any competent government official is seen as a potential political threat to the people at the top. 

Does Karen Bass really want a potential rival for power to look good? The same applies to all power-hungry people. 

The desire for power is universal. It's what draws people into politics in the first place, so I don't want to give conservatives a get out of jail free card. 

But conservatives, as a rule, are not interested in radically changing the system, only skimming a bit off the top in some way. Radicalism and power-hunger are far more damaging. 

Don't worry, though. No matter who or what is really at fault for this disaster, we can rest assured that the real culprit, according to the Democrats is Donald Trump, who is the cause of global warming.