Fact Check: Lies spread by LA fires, including Trump’s statement about water use Climate Crisis News

President-elect Donald Trump and some social media users and pundits blamed California Governor Gavin Newsom for the deadly Los Angeles fires, saying the Democrat’s environmental policies enabled the fire danger and debris.

By January 12, officials counted at least 16 people dead, more than 14,000 hectares (35,000 acres) of land burned and thousands of structures damaged or destroyed.

Some social media users reposted Trump’s 2018 and 2019 criticism of California’s forest management policies, including false statements posted by the then-president as firefighters battled previous wildfires.

It is not unusual for Trump to make false claims about his political opponents during natural disasters. In 2018, he falsely said that “Democrats” had inflated the death toll from Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. In October 2024, he fabricated a claim that the Democratic governor of North Carolina had blocked federal aid to the state after Hurricane Helene.

As victims of the Los Angeles wildfires were recovering from the devastation, we fact-checked these viral claims to find out how, or whether, California’s water policy and forest management affected this disaster.

Trump misled about California water policy

When Los Angeles firefighters raced to contain a fire in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood on January 7 and 8, water pressure in the area’s hydrants dropped, and some hydrants stopped producing water.

Trump, in a January 8 Truth Social post, blamed Newsom’s management for the water issues and said Newsom had refused to allow “beautiful, clean, fresh water to flow into California.”

“Governor Gavin (Newsom) refused to sign the water restoration proclamation put before him, which would have allowed millions of gallons of water from extreme rain and snowmelt from the north to flow daily into many parts of California, including those areas. Currently burning in an almost apocalyptic way,” Trump said. “He wanted to save a useless fish called smelt (it didn’t work!), but no longer care about the people of California. The ultimate price is being paid.”

Trump’s post appears to blame the water shortage on statewide water management plans that capture rain and snow that run off Northern California. But experts said those plans would not affect the response to the fire.

Southern California has abundant water stored, said Mark Gold, director of water scarcity solutions at the Natural Resources Defense Council and a member of the Southern California Metropolitan Water District board.

Experts said local water shortages occurred because the city’s infrastructure was not designed to respond to the large fires that broke out in the Palisades and elsewhere.

“It doesn’t matter what’s happening right now in the Bay-Delta or the Colorado (River) or the Eastern Sierra,” Gould said. “Right now we have all this water in storage. The problem is, when you look at something like firefighting, it’s a more local issue of where your water is. Do you have enough local storage?”

Trump’s reference to a “Water Restoration Proclamation,” which Newsom refused to sign, is puzzling, since no such document appears to exist. Newsom’s press team said on social media, “There is no such document as a water restoration declaration – it is completely fictional.”

Trump’s transition team did not immediately respond to an email seeking clarification. Following publication, a Trump spokesperson emailed PolitiFact referencing a plan from Trump’s first term that directed more water from the federal Central Valley Project to farmers in the San Joaquin Valley.

Newsom and then-California Attorney General Xavier Becerra sued the Trump administration over the plan, which they said violated protections for endangered species including Chinook salmon and Delta smelt – a thin, 2 to 3-inch fish that California It is considered endangered under the Endangered Species Act. Species Act.

But here’s the flaw in Trump’s argument: The Central Valley Project doesn’t provide water to Los Angeles. The regional water district receives some water from the State Water Project, which also collects water from the Delta-Bay region and shares some reservoirs and infrastructure with the Central Valley Project. But Trump’s plan would send most of the additional water to the San Joaquin Valley, and it is wrong to link water management further north to firefighting challenges in Los Angeles.

Experts said the local water system failed because the city’s infrastructure was built to respond to routine structure fires, not large wildfires in many areas.

Ann Jeffers, a civil and environmental engineering professor at the University of Michigan who studies fire engineering, said she is not aware of any industry standards for designing a city’s water supply to fight the Palisades fire. .

The dryness and high winds mean that “these fire events will likely exceed the given design basis, if any exist at all,” Jeffers said.

Stanford University professor and climate scientist Chris Field said climate change makes these conditions worse.

Three main water tanks near the Palisades, each holding approximately 1 million gallons (3.8 million litres), were filled in preparation for the fire due to the dangerous weather. All tanks were depleted by 3 a.m. Jan. 8, Janice Quinones, CEO and chief engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said during a news conference on Jan. 8. Although water continued to flow into the affected areas, demand for water increased faster than the system could supply.

“There’s water in the trunk line, it can’t go up the hill because we can’t fill the tanks fast enough,” Quinones said. “And we can’t reduce the amount of water delivered to the fire department to supply the tanks, because we’re balancing firefighting with water.”

The Los Angeles Times reported on January 10 that a reservoir near Pacific Palisades, which is part of the city’s water supply, was closed for repairs at the time of the fire, which could have slowed water pressure problems. , if it was on.

Other social media users claimed the hydrants had dried up due to California’s slow construction of the reservoir. But the failure of local infrastructure, not regional water storage, caused the hydrant problems, so it is wrong to blame the timing of construction of these projects.

“In 2014, Californians voted overwhelmingly to spend billions of dollars on water storage and reservoirs,” TikTok’s conservative account libz posted on January 8. Gavin Newsom still hasn’t made it. Now water is not coming out from the fire hydrant.”

California voters approved a 2014 ballot measure to spend $2.7 billion on water storage projects — and, to date, none have been completed. Only one of those projects is a new reservoir, located in the Sacramento Valley, about 724 km (450 mi) from Los Angeles. Its operations are scheduled to begin in 2033.

A nearby project, the Chino Basin Program, will improve storage capacity in the system about 100 km (60 mi) west of Los Angeles.

Trump blamed California’s forest management for deadly wildfires in 2018 and 2019.

In a 2019 ex-post, Trump said Newsom should “clean up” the forest floor. In another 2019 post, Trump wrote that “billions of dollars are being sent to the state of California for wildfires that would never happen with proper forest management,” and called for withholding Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) money. Threatened.

Social media users who re-shared the claim in the context of the Los Angeles disaster used a 2018 video of Trump with then-Governor-elect Newsom at the scene of a destroyed mobile home park in Northern California. In the video, Trump talked about the need to drain and clear forest floors to prevent wildfires.

“Trump warned them about this years ago,” Fox News host Jesse Waters said in a January 8 segment about the Los Angeles fires.

“Is Trump ever wrong?” a social media user asked.

In a September 2020 appearance with Trump after another California wildfire, Newsom said that in the past the state had “not done justice in our forest management” and called for a new “first-of-its-kind commitment” over the next 20 years. Thanked Trump for supporting and funding. Double our vegetation management and forest management”.

Newsom also noted that the federal government owns 57 percent of California’s forest land, while 3 percent is state-owned, and that climate change plays a role in wildfires. Forest researchers verify forest land ownership figures.

A January 8 post on Newsom’s website said California would “compound on the state’s work to enhance wildland and forest resiliency” by treating more than 283,000 hectares (700,000 acres) of land for wildfire fire in 2023. has increased dramatically”. It covers over approximately 231,000 hectares (572,000 acres). in 2021, according to a state dashboard that tracks fire prevention work.

The governor’s post said prescribed fires (controlled fires used to control wildfires) have more than doubled from 2021 to 2023. Newsom’s press office said the state invests $200 million annually on healthy forests and fire prevention programs, and his budget calls for more than $4 billion in past and future investments in wildfire response over the next several years. Does.

Field, of Stanford University, said the factors controlling the risk and spread of fires in California vary from place to place.

Fuel management is important in the forests of the Sierra mountain range, Field said, but not so near the Southern California coast. Property owners and fire professionals can assist in fuel management, mostly by clearing flammable materials and vegetation around homes to create buffer zones. Generally, homeowners and homeowner associations will be responsible, he said.

Field said the wildland that has burned in Los Angeles includes areas that have many different owners. The federally owned Angeles National Forest neighbors Altadena, where the Eaton wildfire is burning. The Pacific Palisades fire involved state and national parkland.

“California is fortunate to have a wide range of spectacular natural landscapes, but the state is struggling with how to manage those landscapes to manage fire risk,” Field said. He said all government parties had recently launched “ambitious” fire risk reduction programmes. Year.

Field said it is important for property owners to create buffer zones against wildfires, but he also said he does not see evidence that “fuel management (or lack of fuel management) played any role in the L.A. fires.” Have played”.

Wildfires behave differently depending on whether they start in forests or brush vegetation, said Robert York, co-director of Berkeley Forestry and a professor in the Roushner College of Natural Resources.

For example, the Pacific Palisades Fire, the largest of the state’s current wildfires, started as a bushfire and spread through the area’s dense chaparral, a shrub plant community common in the state. Chaparral is easily affected by strong winds, which limits the effectiveness of management before a fire occurs, York said, while forest-focused efforts to reduce tree density and brush cover “are effective in reducing fire intensity.” are known to be taken”.

The state and private landowners have worked to improve forest management, he said, but more needs to be done.

PolitiFact senior correspondent Amy Sherman contributed to this report.