This message comes from St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Active and retired federal employees and military staff can support St. Jude during the 2024 combined federal campaign. Visit stjude.org slash cfc and donate now using the code 10560. Hi, this is Jacqueline Sullivan from Winter Park, Florida.
Currently in line at Blue Springs State Park in Orange City, waiting to see the 600 or so manatees that have come to the park to swim in the 72 degree natural springs during a rare Florida cold snap. This podcast was recorded at 1.07 p.m. on Monday, the 13th of January. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but hopefully I will have seen some manatees by then. Okay, enjoy the show.
Aw, manatees. I would think, are manatees one of your favorites, Tam? They're on the list. They're not... At the very top, I have no insults for manatees, so that means they're doing pretty well in the animal world. I've kayaked with manatees. They're pretty cool. Yeah, yeah. They're slow. They're cool.
Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And joining us today is NPR national correspondent Kirk Siegler. Hey, Kirk. Hey, guys. The Los Angeles area has been devastated by wildfires over the past week, with the two largest ones far from fully contained. And forecasters are warning again that there are dangerous Santa Ana winds on the way.
Kurt, let's start with the big picture. You have been in California covering these fires. What's the status of them now? Well, I think with your disclaimer that we play up at the top there, I think we're safe. Like, it's not going to get any better, at least anytime soon. You know, it's a very active fire situation and still very active unfolding disaster. I mean, authorities are still going through in places that are safe enough to go through, combing through the area, looking for.
you know, not survivors at this point, but any human remains left in the fire zones. It is extraordinary, but also I would say not necessarily unexpected, unfortunately. California is in another extreme drought. California is almost constantly in drought just because of its climate in particular, but the rainy season in Southern California has not shown up yet.
And they're coming off of two years of extraordinarily wet conditions because we're kind of in this climate whiplash seesaw back and forth of extremes that are just getting... even more extreme with climate change so you've got all this vegetation built up and then you get winds like that and you've got infrastructure there you've got whole cities of course los angeles is a city built out into wild lands that are
prone to burn. And so it's just these conditions that are just making things very, very dangerous at the moment. I'm hoping you can take us back to last week and help explain How did these fires start? How did they get so bad? You know, the investigation into the actual cause of the fires will take months. But of course, there's already some theories, if not speculation, that it's possible down power lines. I mean, we've seen this story before from Hawaii to California.
to Colorado and wins like that. I think there will be a lot of scrutiny and focus on what was de-energized in the grid you know they knew this extraordinary wind event was coming like that's not unheard of and it's certainly quite common for the winter in california you get these desert winds blowing off from
the Mojave, they're very dry and the humidity goes way down. But in my experience covering wildfires, particularly in California, and you're hearing local authorities talk about this, if you cut through some of the politics that's going on, these are fires you are not going to stop. The conditions are so dangerous that it's dangerous even to put firefighters in the way. And it's actually...
You know, it's very much a tragedy. But if the death toll stays relatively low, you know, that's remarkable. I mean, certainly it's very, very sad, but it possibly could have been a lot worse. There's thinking in the wildland fire world.
Like, why are we trying to put out these fires that you say are, you know, neighborhoods, whole cities built out into the wildlands that are, you know, full of brush and they've done mitigation work. But, you know, we don't try to stop a hurricane. So why are we.
trying to stop wildfires. That's what wildlife firefighters are now increasingly saying, because these conditions are such that you're just not going to stop them, let alone even slow them. I mean, over the... period of the last few days being out there, they haven't even been able until recently to attack these fires from the air. i think if people could figure out a way to stop hurricanes they would try i mean you know i think that uh that there's clearly something going on here in
with the politics versus the reality. There's very quick finger pointing that we've seen from President-elect Trump. A lot of times people will – look at what he has to say and say, well, that's just politics. I do wonder if there's a question about what could have been done.
Are there preparations that have been made sufficiently as the country and the world are going to be dealing, frankly, with climate change that's increasingly making the climate worse, making wildfires worse, making hurricanes worse?
party that doesn't want to talk about that with republicans and want to talk about things like uh hardening homes and uh you know getting rid of brush all of these things to some extent there could be truth in a lot of what either side says, but there isn't a lot of bridging the gap on this right now.
Right. I mean, we've actually seen throughout the Biden administration, the narrative switch more to wildfires are all climate change versus during the previous Trump administration. It was, well, we need to do more brush clearing and logging when in reality, I think the experts will tell you you need to do both. It's about.
both. California does have compared to the rest of the West and Los Angeles in particular does have some of the most restrictive building codes and brush clearance ordinances and rules about what you can and cannot have around your homes. You're talking about, Domenico, you're talking about finger pointing. There's already been some of that within City Hall, even in Los Angeles, with some budget cuts to the fire department and the LA fire chief saying we haven't had enough.
money to go around and enforce those codes so that's another big thing that i think we'll want to be tracking in the you know the weeks and months to come as we figure out well what could have if anything been done to at least make this not so bad Are there lessons to be learned about like the specifics of this disaster?
I think there were some preemptive power shutoffs, whether or not there were enough or they were in the right areas. Can you just explain why cutting off the power lines, cutting off the power would potentially... prevent fires in this instance? Well, when you consider that a lot of the Western U.S. and frankly, the U.S. has aging infrastructure and aging power lines in some places, we saw this in Paradise, California in 2018.
When those lines are hot and active and you get winds like we saw last week and something topples and then these lines are built around a lot of dry brush. I would also point out Maui in Lahaina. The power lines are around over.
grown brush so as soon as that live wire hits brush something as simple as that can start a small flame that turns into a deadly inferno the issue is when you shut off the power it's sort of a damned if you do damned if you don't perspective from the utilities because they catch a lot of flack when they do shut it off and especially if they don't do adequate warning in some people's minds because you're then
cutting off critical electricity supplies to hospitals, nursing homes, emergency facilities, infrastructure. But then on the other hand, if you don't preemptively shut the power off, you could get a blaze that turns into...
a huge wildfire that you just can't stop, right? These are not like the fires that we used to cover even in the beginnings of our careers. These are urban wildfires. This is the second largest city in the U.S. It's just really hard to imagine trying to stop something like this.
All right, we're going to take a quick break, and we'll be back in a moment. This is Eric Glass. On This American Life, sometimes we just show up somewhere, turn on our tape recorders, and see what happens. If you can't get seven cars in 12 days.
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become politicized. President-elect Trump blamed Governor Gavin Newsom for the poor response and called other officials incompetent. He blamed state water policy and fire prevention policy. How should we think about all of this criticism? Well, we've come a long way since Hurricane Ian and President Biden and Ron DeSantis working together two years ago and putting what was a rivalry really aside. DeSantis was highly critical of –
Biden's cultural and social policies. Biden certainly didn't agree with DeSantis on a lot of things, but they were able to put that aside for disaster recovery when it came to the hurricane there in Florida. And we've just seen that devolve. Over the last two years where disaster funding has become political, we're seeing people on Capitol Hill saying that they want to offset any disaster aid with other spending cuts. I think the climate right now on all of that.
is just, it's at a fever pitch, especially with President-elect Trump. about to take office, and we're not sure how this Republican House is going to function or operate or deal with things like disaster aid and disaster funding, which used to be the low-hanging fruit of what they could get passed. There has been a lot of focus from Trump and some of his allies on why the fire hydrants ran dry in the early hours of this fight. Do you have answers to what really went wrong?
We don't. Governor Newsom has called for an investigation. There's been a lot of focus on that reservoir in Pacific Palisades run by a Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, LADWP, why it was offline. But it's not clear, again, that may have stopped some of the destruction and devastation in the neighborhoods.
in uh west la uh the governor is calling for the investigation the governor was also on meet the press uh yesterday inviting uh president-elect trump to come to california to see it for himself I think it has been remarkable, but maybe not surprising and also sad that this is so politicized so quickly. I don't know if it has something to do also with Governor Newsom's, you know, ongoing presidential ambitions down the road. And that's why there's quick finger.
pointing but I will also be interested to see some of the More local finger pointing going on at City Hall and whether or not Karen Bass, the former congresswoman who was actually out of the country at the time and then did fly back from Ghana when these fires ignited. I think there's going to be a lot of scrutiny on her and there may be a political fallout on her.
Yeah, Republicans love to hold out California as everything that is wrong with how to govern, right? And Democrats will often point to California as being at the tip of the spear of – How to govern properly. And so when you have a wildfire or a disaster, it's very easy for Trump and Republicans to be able to point the fingers.
at democratic governance. And then especially when you have that local infighting about who could have done what when, it's certainly going to add fuel to their criticisms, certainly nationally. about the water hydrants running dry. I mean the reporting that we've seen is that there was very high demand and there would be almost no city in the world that could have dealt with putting out fires.
almost every neighborhood over such a long stretch. But again, when it comes to this local governance of So managing emergencies like this versus planning in a very big way over the next 10, 50, 100 years for climate change is where the real tension is going to be. Yeah, and I think, Kirk, one thing that you said before. that this was an urban wildfire. It was not, you know, out in the wildlands. It was hundreds of house fires simultaneously happening.
And in some cases, the houses themselves create the fuel for the fire that we see in these tragedies. We have to remember also California, Southern California in particular, is entering another extreme drought period. So, you know, the water... water availability is just not there en masse. I was in particular interested in Republicans, Trump included, pointing out or trying to tie the water situation and the availability.
water in the hydrants to an ongoing political fight that's mostly unrelated over an endangered species way up in the Sacramento Delta that has limited water deliveries to the south to farms and to cities in southern California. Somehow Trump was trying to say that this was...
related to why they couldn't get, you know, water on the fire. Well, they couldn't get water on the fire because there wasn't enough pressure in the hydrants, but also you just couldn't safely fly over the fire to drop water on it at the time with those winds. So that gets at something that I think we should talk about because there's misinformation, conspiracy theories.
Blaming people's ideology. And that has now become a day one response to natural disasters, at least on social media. And I'm wondering if that complicates things for people on the ground. It certainly makes it harder to report on, and definitely if you're living in it and having to evacuate. I can't tell you how many times in the last few days people have approached me in evacuation centers or even sometimes within the fire zone. Well, do you know what's going on?
going on because I don't really understand. You know, I'm hearing five different things from five different outlets and I don't know what to believe. You know, for his part, Governor Newsom did set up some sort of, you know, anti-disinformation outlet. I don't know that that's going to go anywhere, but it is a favorite on...
You know, even that could be politicized. It's a favorite on the left, right, to talk about disinformation. So it just feels even more chaotic. And I think it might be a product of the sort of moment we're in in America right now. Yeah, well, regardless of the local politics, the misinformation, the national politics on this are notable, but there's a really big important function that the federal government –
plays, which is just basically giving out money for recovery. And that's a big piece here. And President Biden, we know, has approved a major disaster declaration in California. He's making federal funding available for those affected in LA. going to extend into Trump's term? Or is he talking about potentially clawing that back? Yeah. It's a remarkable thing, actually. President Biden is giving a 100 percent match to the state for these recovery efforts in the first.
180 days. And I actually asked the FEMA director about this. He has at the time he had about 10 days left and he was guaranteeing this 100 percent coverage for 180 days. And she said that President Biden is within his powers to do this under statute. And so he's doing it. I think there is a question.
about whether President Trump will try to find a way to claw it back. But also, there's a question of whether he would even want to. He has not vocalized that. So I think, although I was asking about it, it may be a little bit premature to know the answer. We could see this, guys, as a portent potentially into what's to come. If we look back to 2020, a story that I covered a lot.
Then President Trump held up a presidential disaster declaration in Washington state over wildfires that were destructive and it burned in farm country there over an apparent political dispute with Governor Jay Inslee of Washington state. That was held up. for months, and that held up recovery and the rebuilding efforts of very struggling economically towns in counties in Washington state that were deep red. So it was actually...
quite an ongoing situation to watch. Eventually there was a declaration declared, but I can't help but watch some of this and the politicking going on around this and the 100% kind of unprecedented reimbursement to California in the late days. of the Biden administration. He can't help but wonder, like, what's going to happen with President-elect Trump? All right. Well, we're going to leave it there for today. Kirk, thank you so much for bringing your reporting to the pod. You're welcome.
I'm Tamara Keep. I cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, Senior Political Editor and Correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. On the web at theschmidt.org. This message comes from NYU Langone. The NYU Langone Health app gives you access to your electronic health record.
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