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Spreading like wildfire: How Trump’s misinformation about water and fire in Los Angeles inflames the situation
By Peter Gleick | January 9, 2025
Fighting the Palisades Fire in Los Angeles, California. (Photo: Cal Fire)Share
As devastating wildfires sweep over parts of southern California, it is vital that media, the public, and our policymakers understand what’s happening and how to best respond. The first and most important need is to ensure that local communities have accurate, real-time information about the risks they face, and that emergency responders have the resources they need. In the coming months and years, however, it will be critical to improve our understanding of these risks and how they are changing with accelerating climate change and with changing population and development patterns, and to improve our ability to manage worsening disasters.
What’s not helpful are inaccurate statements from politicians. But that’s what Donald Trump offered up when he posted a statement on TruthSocial falsely laying the blame for the fires and for firefighting problems on democratic governor Gavin Newsom and state water policies.
The first thing to understand is that reported problems with water supply for firefighters are the direct result of the massive demands for fire-fighting water, the destruction of pipes and pumps by the fires, and homeowners leaving hoses and sprinklers running to try to protect their property. All of these demands overwhelmed the water-supply infrastructure, causing some water tanks and hydrants to lose pressure or dry up. They have nothing to do with the overall availability of water to southern California and nothing to do with the state’s efforts to protect endangered and threatened fish and ecosystems.
For more than a century, Californians have argued over how to allocate the state’s water among farmers, industry, cities, and homeowners, and how to reverse longstanding policies that simply take more and more water away from the environment. Only in recent years have efforts been made to try to protect the state’s remaining endangered and threatened aquatic ecosystems and to restore a modicum of water for them. Disputes over these policies will continue, but no state policies have led to water shortages for southern California cities or had any effect on firefighting resources.
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Indeed, there is no water-supply shortage in the region right now. California reservoirs, including major southern California reservoirs, have far more water than average for this time of year. And most of the water for Los Angeles doesn’t come from the Central Valley water systems Trump is referring to, but from local sources, the Colorado River, and the Owens Valley aqueduct.
Trump’s attempt to score political points with inaccurate statements about California water policy and wildfires is unhelpful, to say the least. Using this disaster as an excuse to pressure a roll-back of environmental protections is dangerous and counterproductive.
Of course, Trump is also ignoring another key factor at play here: climate change. Scientists are increasingly improving our understanding of the links between climate change and wildfires. The fires we’re now seeing in southern California are unprecedented in timing, scope, and intensity, and they are certainly influenced by accelerating human-caused climate change. The region is experiencing some of the driest conditions on record for early January, three months into what should be California’s rainy season. Los Angeles and the region have received almost no rain for 10 months (see figure). Soils and vegetation are suffering bone dry conditions because higher temperatures are driving increased evaporation. And extraordinarily strong Santa Ana winds approaching 100 mph are spreading fires with uncontrollable speed.
If leaders really wanted to be helpful in dealing with disasters like fires, hurricanes, droughts, floods, and other extreme climate-related events, the best thing they could do would be to stop spreading misinformation, to acknowledge the reality of climate change, to expand federal investments in understanding and preparing for disasters, to accelerate efforts to slow the rate of climate change, and to provide adequate disaster response resources for devastated communities. Let’s prioritize science over politics.
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