The LA Recall Election Of 1938

The self-satisfied gent with the fussy Hitler mustache in the photo is Frank L Shaw (1877-1958), who was mayor of Los Angeles fron 1933 to 1938. He was the only mayor of LA ever to be recalled, and in my view, he'll likely keep that distinction barring major changes -- as Greg Gutfeld puts it about the current situation, lots of ash, no phoenix. The newspaper story below (click on the image for a more legible copy) gives the outline of the story that led to his recall, but as Wikipedia points out, "His administration was seen as one of the most corrupt in Los Angeles history, although he had some defenders and was never charged officially with any crime."

The prevailing "whig history" view of the episode portrays it in pure good-guy-vs-bad-guy terms: Fletcher Bowron, a Superior Court judge, ran against Shaw on a so-called "fusion ticket" of all good elements to recall Shaw, and he won. He was characterized by Time as "a fiercely honest man, and is eternally intent on protecting Los Angeles from itself." According to Wikipedia, he:

earned the reputation of being lawful, unlike his predecessor. This was part of what he called the Los Angeles Urban Reform Revival.

Los Angeles grew enormously during the war years, with very large defense industries. After the war Bowron began construction of the Los Angeles International Airport and the 1st phases of the elaborate freeway system. . . . A high priority was eliminating organized crime from the city's police department. He forced the resignation of numerous officers, and prevented Los Angeles from becoming a wide open town. Bowron ran on nonpartisan fusion tickets, but his popularity declined in his 4th term. The Los Angeles Citizens Committee demanded his recall, claiming he was responsible for high taxes and continued police corruption. In 1952 he lost his reelection bid in the Republican primary to Norris Poulson, a conservative opponent of public housing.

Much of the reform in the police department, however, came via his appointment of William H Parker as police chief, which he did in 1950, only three years before he left office. Parker, who was behind popular television shows that portrayed Los Angeles police like Dragnet, vied with J Edgar Hoover as the public face of law enforcement throughout the 1950s, well after Bowron's retirement.

In fact, the urban reform movement was never quite happy with Bowron. Clifford Clinton, a good-government advocate who'd been a Bowron ally in the 1938 recall, broke with him and ran against him in the 1945 mayoral election:

By the early 1940s, Clifford Clinton had become disenchanted with reform Mayor Fletcher Bowron. . . . [A] poll of potential voters revealed strong support for Clinton as a mayoral challenger.

Clinton initially refused. When liberal county Supervisor John Anson Ford announced he would challenge Boweon, Clinton reconsidered because he didn't believe Ford could win. Ford had lost to Mayor Shaw in 1937.

He joined the race and published a treatise of his plan for the city in a 14-page pamphlet, "The Clock Strikes Twelve: It's Time To Act." During the campaign, Clinton pushed for better leadership to deal with ongoing corruption, infrastructure, and racial polarization.

On election night, Clinton came in a distant second, losing to Bowron.

In fact, Bowron turned out to be a politician much like any other. He ran for reelection in the spring of 1941, only months before Pearl Harbor, and he actively sought the support of Japanese-Amnerican voters:

During the 1941 municipal election, Bowron campaigned in Little Tokyo, and John Aiso was among those who tried to attract Japanese American voters for Bowron. He won the election with an estimated 55% of the vote.

Following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Bowron reassured listeners on his weekly radio program that there was no threat of an attack on Southern California shores. However by January 1942, Bowron became one of the early elected officials to call for the incarceration of Japanese Americans, urging that Japanese Americans be moved several miles inland and be put to work for the war effort, such as raising food.

On January 27, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors discharged all Japanese American county employees and adopted a resolution, urging the federal government to remove Japanese Americans from the coastal areas. Bowron took similar steps and forced all Los Angeles City employees of Japanese descent to take a leave of absence. Bowron's office also embarked on a propaganda campaign to try to control the Japanese American population by encouraging the community to inform on each other and by emphasizing dire consequences for anyone caught committing acts of sabotage.

. . . When the federal government started releasing Japanese Americans from the incarceration camps in 1943, Bowron used his radio program to vehemently oppose their return to Southern California. He felt there could be an outbreak of violence and emphasized that the city could not provide housing or police protection to any returning Japanese Americans. He also continued to publicly advocate that all Japanese Americans should have their U.S. citizenship revoked.

The bottom line is that at least the old-fashioned urban reform movement, grounded in the Progressive era that gave us putative reforms like the recall, didn't cure much of anything that ailed LA. Even if it were possible to recall the current Mayor Bass -- which I very much doubt; a change of heart among the 1% in Pacific Palisades isn't enough to swing an election -- based on the historical record, it isn't going to change much of anything. A new populist coalition, on the other hand, that united the aspirations of the working and middle classes of all backgrounds, might be a different matter.

That wouldn't be a repeat of 1938. Nevertheless, so far, lots of ash, no phoenix.

LA Fire Department "Class 1"?

My first job after I left academe was as a writer with the LA City statistical bureau. In that job, I worked a lot with the fire department, and one of the first things I learned was that LAFD is a "Class 1" department. Its apparatus proudly carried, and in fact still carries, a "Class 1" designation, as you can see in the photo above (click on the image for a better view). Here's an explanation of what the ISO "Class 1" means:

ISO stands for Insurance Services Office (ISO), which is an independent, for-profit organization. The ISO scores fire departments on how they are doing against its organization’s standards to determine property insurance costs.

After analyzing the data it collects, the ISO assigns a Public Protection Classification (PPC) on a scale from 1 to 10. The higher the ISO fire protection class (with Class 1 being the best), the “better” the department – at least in the eyes of the ISO.

To determine ISO rating for fire departments, the organization conducts a field survey and scores your department across four key areas using the Fire Suppression Rating Schedule (FSRS).

These areas include Emergency Communication Systems (10 points); Fire Departments, covering personnel, capabilities, training, equipment, etc. (50 points); Water Supply (40 points); and Community Risk Reduction (extra credit of up to 5.5 points).

It uses a 100-point scale (with the potential of 105.5 with the Community Risk Reduction extra credit), and the more points you score, the better your ISO fire rating.

I hadn't thought about the fire department in many years, except the other day, I noticed that Glendale Fire Department apparatus also now carries a "Class 1" designation -- but at least back in the day, Glendale was held in low regard by other fire departments in the area. There was a major scandal when their chief arson investigator turned out to moonlight as an arsonist when he wasn't on duty. So with all the controversy over the LA Fire Department's DEI policies, staff cuts, derelict apparatus, and empty hydrants, I assdumed LAFD had almost certainly lost its "Class 1" designation.

It turns out I'm not the only person to ask this question. Here's some of the discussion on an EMT forum:

I don’t think they ever stopped putting class 1 although I have heard that supposedly they no long have a class 1 rating

. . . I've "heard" that they haven't actually had an ISO evaluation for several decades, but they always continued to put "Class 1" on their rigs

But according to the first link above, "Class 1" doesn't necessarily mean what people think it does anyhow:

While it’s a common perception that homeowner’s insurance premiums are directly tied to the ISO fire rating, this isn’t necessarily true. Many insurers do provide discounts for lower PPC scores, but their rating structure is complex and constantly changing. And in some states, the score is not even a factor at all.

. . . Ultimately, a lower score reflects well on a fire department. Like accreditation, a good ISO fire rating demonstrates a commitment to excellence as verified by a third-party reviewal.

Plus, it really is an honor to be able to claim an ISO Fire Protection Class 1 rating. You all work hard as a team, so to come out on top with a high ISO score is something you want to shout from the top of your fire truck.

But the EMT discussion also raises the question of whether the LAFD actually holds a current "Class 1" designation. And if it does, why are major insurers nevertherless pulling out of areas in the City with high fire risk? The link goes on,

While this isn’t totally on the fire department, you will need to advocate to your city or county’s leaders in order to make community water supply a priority.

Water supply is the single biggest contributor to lower scores. So, if you want to improve your ISO score and you have an inadequate water supply, your fire department needs to get the issue onto the radar of city officials.

Clearly water supply -- the dormant Santa Ynez Reservoir and the dry hydrants -- was a major factor in the Palisades fire, but neither the ISO nor the mayor and City Council seems to have addressed it. It will be a major task to get the community behind reforming the current fire department priorities. A letter to Chief Crowley from current and retired Fire Department officers calling for her resignation is a potential first step:

Last week, complaints about funding for her department boiled over into a public dispute between Mayor Karen Bass and Chief Crowley. This week, veteran fire managers charged that she and her staff should have positioned more engines in advance in high-risk areas like Pacific Palisades, where the fires began on Jan. 7.

. . . A Jan. 13 letter signed by unnamed “retired and active L.A.F.D. chief officers” accused her of a host of management failures and called for her to step down. “A large number of chief officers do not believe you are up to the task,” the five-page letter read in part.

. . . Even before the fire, the chief faced strong political challenges, Dr. Guerra said. Her appointment in early 2022 by the prior mayor, Mr. Garcetti, was seen as an attempt to steady the department after years of complaints of harassment and discrimination raised by female L.A.F.D. firefighters.

Clearly a goal of reform-oriented community leaders -- if in fact these ever surface -- will need to focus local politics away from DEI and back to basic issues of community safety. This won't happen until both Chief Crowley and Mayor Bass are out of office, but before that happens, community leaders are going to have to emerge who can defenestrate them. That could possibly include figues like former mayoral candidate Rick Caruso, former Sheriff Alex Villanueva, and LA Times owner Dr Patrick Soon-Shiong. But Soon-Shiong in particular will need to grow a spine.

The LA Fires And The Homeless-Industrial Complex

As I follow the unfolding scandal of the LA fires, the issue that begins to stand out is the reduction of resources to the Los Angeles City Fire Department, for instance:

In a preliminary budget request for 2025/26, signed by Fire Chief Kristin Rowley, made on October 29, the LAFD asked for $96,535,000 to fund a 'fleet replacement plan'.

. . . The firefighting force said in its request to the city: 'Many vehicles have surpasses their expected service life, leading to increased maintenance costs, reduces parts availability and potential downtime.'

And in its formal proposal to the city in November, it requested $24,063,000 for 'new fleet/apparatus purchases'.

In the preliminary budget request, the LAFD also asked for more than $1.9million to restore 16 maintenance positions 'deleted' in last year's budget.

It said in its request: 'The positions support fleet maintenance, equipment engineering, purchasing and warehouse management and distribution.'

. . . While the fire department's budget steadily grew from from $674.27 million in 2019 to $819.64 million in 2025, this year it faced a significant fall from $837.19 million in 2024.

In a December memo, Crowley said the cut of $17.6million 'adversely affected the Department’s ability to maintain core operations, such as technology and communication infrastructure, payroll processing, training, fire prevention, and community education.'

. . . A leaked memo last week revealed that Karen Bass had demanded the LAFD make an additional $49million budget cut, on top of the $17.6million cut.

The extra cuts, requested just days before fires broke out and devastated swathes of Los Angeles, would have shut down 16 fire stations and crippled the department's ability to respond to emergencies, sources previously told DailyMail.com.

There's also the unanswered question of why the Santa Ynez Reservoir had been empty and under repair since 2022, when a mandated update was supposed to have been finished in 2012, which I covered in this post. The LA Department of Water and Power's explanation completely glosses over this extended tmeline:

In a memo posted by the LADWP attempting to combat misinformation regarding water supply, they clarified that “LADWP was required to take the Santa Ynez Reservoir out of service to meet safe drinking water regulations,” but stated that “water supply remained strong to the area.”

But the safe drinking water updates were supposed to have been finsihed in 2012, while the reservoir has been in and out of service over a dozen years since then. This sounds as though the LADWP's budget is being squeezed just as much as the fire department. Where is this money going?

The best answer I've heard is from Alex Villanueva, who was LA County Sheriff from 2018 to 2022. Villanueva, although a Democrat, was also a Trump-style populist who during his tenure took an increasing interest in the homeless problem. In particular, he took on homeless encampments in places like Venice Beach, whose local city councilman had advocated pro-encampment policies:

When it comes to law enforcement in Venice, the Los Angeles Police Department has long been the agency in charge.

But now Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva is sending deputies in to patrol the boardwalk and beach in an effort to crack down on Venice's growing homelessness problem.

And it's sparking an ugly political spat.

That prompted a series of angry tweets from Los Angeles City Councilmember Mike Bonin, who called Villanueva a "roadblock" to progress, accused him of exploiting the homeless for political gain, and called the effort a PR blitz promising Villanueva's "notorious brand of justice."

"The city of LA created this problem," Villanueva said Monday in Venice. "This is a failure of leadership from the very top."

As LA County Sheriff, Villanueva insisted he had legal authority over law enforcement anywhere in the county, whether or not, as in this case, LAPD was also responsible, and if LAPD wasn't going to act, the sheriff's office would. Villanueva also pointed out that the sheriff is a separately elected official, and he doesn't take orders from any other politicians.

In effect, Villanueva was taking on the county and state machine, which promptly found a candidate to run against him in the 2022 election, and Villanueva was defeated. But he's continued to make his point: the homeless problem exists because politicians make money off it:

Over the past decade, $6.5 billion has been spent trying to solve Los Angeles County’s homelessness crisis. However, instead of decreasing, its homeless population has increased to nearly 70,000 from its 2011 total of 39,000, according to last year’s point-in-time count.

The worsening of the issue can be partially attributed to it being profitable for many organizations and individuals, Alex Villanueva, former Los Angeles County Sheriff, said in a recent Epoch Time’s California Insider interview.

“They’re not doing anything about it because the homeless industrial complex is alive and well,” he said.

According to Villanueva, many nonprofit organizations receive county funding to help solve the issue, but there are no clear guidelines on how such funding should be used.

“There’s no governance, there’s no oversight, there’s no accountability on the results. [The county] just keeps shoveling money at them, and the problem keeps getting worse and worse,” he said.

Unfortunately, Mayor Bass is on board with the homeless-industrial complex:

For the 2023-2024 fiscal year, Los Angeles budgeted $837 million for the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD), which was roughly 65% the size of the homeless budget of $1.3 billion.

An analysis by L.A.'s city comptroller last year found that roughly half the budget for homelessness went unspent.

Bass had proposed a larger budget cut to the LAFD, about $23 million, but it was not adopted.

This is where the fire department's budget, as well as related projects like the dormant Santa Ynez Reservoir, is going. I can only surmise that the homeless budget, which is comparable to the City's in in LA County and supported in part by a sales tax increment, is embedded with local politicians because there's a skim -- some amount of this multibillion-dollar expenditure is kicked back to the politicians themselves. This is inevitably going to come out as the federal budget battles heat up. It can't happen soon enough.

Where Do Politics Stand After The Fires?

Karen Bass was at a cocktail party while the Palisades burned. https://t.co/xjk1BcncKd pic.twitter.com/qgeulSklac

— Eric Spiegelman (@ericspiegelman) January 15, 2025

Efforts to recall or defeat political figures like Gov Newsom, Mayor Bass, or others have been generally feckless in recent years. Los Angeles County voters failed twice to secure enough signatures to recall soft-on-crime district attorney George Gascon before they ultimately did vote him out in his reelection bid last year. A 2021 effort to recall Gov Newsom failed, and he was reelected in 2022:

Gov. Gavin Newsom sailed to reelection Tuesday night, easily defeating Republican state Sen. Brian Dahle in an outcome seen as so inevitable that he barely campaigned for reelection.

He's term limited now, and he has to find a new job, possibly running for president in 2028, if he wants to continue his career. Mayor Karen Bass won her first mayoral election against developer Rick Caruso in 2022 by about 10%. Two years later, even before the fires, Caruso was flirting with the ides of running against her again:

Real estate developer Rick Caruso made it clear two years ago that he wouldn’t run again for Los Angeles mayor if he lost to Karen Bass.

But lately, Caruso has been behaving a bit like a candidate.

He's shown more energy since the fires:

Amid a flurry of largely right-wing backlash of California public officials’ handling of the deadly wildfires near Los Angeles, the billionaire Rick Caruso, who unsuccessfully ran as a Democrat for Los Angeles mayor, emerged as the most notable critic, tearing into his former opponent in L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and earning the support of the world’s richest man and GOP megadonor Elon Musk.

. . . Caruso, whose criticism differed from the likes of President-elect Donald Trump, who swiped at California Gov. Gavin Newsom for not greenlighting a fictitious “water restoration declaration,” led a band of local politicians critical of the city, including Traci Park, the city council member representing the neighborhoods worst hit by the fires, who told the Los Angeles Times she has “more questions than answers” on how what she called the “chronic under-investment” in infrastructure contributed to the fire’s severity.

But whether Caruso will actually run again or even back a recall effort is still unclear. Other efforts to recall Bass or somehow force her resignation are so far just wishful thinking:

More than 86,000 outraged Los Angeles residents demand the ouster of lefty Mayor Karen Bass in a new petition, ripping her “gross mismanagement” in her disastrous response to the devastating wildfires ravaging the city.

“We . . . urgently call for the immediate recall of [Bass] due to her gross mismanagement and failure to effectively respond to the devastating 2025 fires in and around the city,” reads the Change.org petition created Wednesday, which had amassed more than 65,000 signatures by Saturday morning.

Bass was 7,400 miles away in Africa, at the inauguration of Ghana’s president, as flames began engulfing the City of Angels.

However, a Change.org petition is nothing but a Change.org petition. In California, a recall petition must be formally filed as part of a legal process, and it must have the verified signatuires of at least 10% of the voters. As of last year, Los Angeles City had 2,130,581 registered voters, which means a successful recall petition would need at least 213,058 verified signatures. The two unsuccessful recall petitions against George Gascon were thrown out by machine judges who rejected tens of thousands of signatures, and we may assume any such petition against Mayor Bass would have the same result.

At least there's a slightly less Quixotic effort against Gov Newsom:

A recall attempt to knock California Gov. Gavin Newsom out of office is underway as he faces sharp criticism for his handling of the Los Angeles wildfires — with opponents labeling his leadership a “series of catastrophic failures.”

Organizers against Newsom vowed to file papers in the next two weeks in hopes of jumpstarting the process that could lead to the Democrat’s ouster in the middle of his second term in the governor’s mansion.

. . . A notice of intent needs to be filed first and then recall supporters must collect about 1.3 million signatures in five months, according to the outlet.

. . . Newsom, 57, easily survived the 2021 recall vote in a state where Democrats hold a clear advantage in voter registration over Republicans.

A spokesperson for Newsom dismissed the latest attempt to throw the Dem out of office, insisting to Newsweek that the governor is “100 percent focused on the fires, ongoing rescue efforts and the recovery process — not politics.”

“Readers still should have the context that the same group of far-right Trump acolytes have launched six different recall attempts against the governor since he’s taken office, each of which have failed spectacularly,” spokesperson Nathan Click said in a statement.

The only hope for a new recall attempt, if Newsom repeats his 2021 strategy to characterize the organizers as Trump supporters, would be to rely on a general shift in opinion about Trump and hope it rubs off in the local context. Last November, Trump was able to benefit from a view that electing Biden in 2020 was a mistake. Now we have people like Dr Soon-Shiong saying endorsing Bass for mayor was an equivalent mistake. But for such a movement to succeed, it will need much more than Change.og petitoins and wishful thinking.

Has Dr Pat Soon-Shiong Been Redpilled?

“Competence matters”: LA Times owner says that it was a “mistake” for his paper to endorse Karen Bass for Mayor in 2022pic.twitter.com/Y6btIn2dW7

— Rantingly (@rantinglydotcom) January 13, 2025

Mark Halperin had Dr Patrick Soon-Shiong, currently best known as the owner of the Los Angeles Times, on his Morning Meeting 2WAY show yesterday morning for an extended interview, along with his co-hosts Sean Spicer and Dan Turrentine. For all rhe hoopla, there wasn't much to it: Dr Soon-Shiong is best known for vetoing the Times editorial board's decision to endorse Kamala for president last November, then asking CNN conservative commentator Scott Jennings to join the same editorial board.

More recently, as we see above, he's said it was a “mistake” for his paper to endorse Karen Bass for Mayor in 2022, which he repeated in the Halperin interview. And that's just about it. What's the big deal? Wikipedia says Jennings "worked in the George W. Bush administration and has been described as an adviser to Senator Mitch McConnell." The man is hardly a firebrand.

Beyond that, Soon-Shiong has owned the LA Times since 2018. Why is he making these changes only now? Beyond that, according to the link,

In 2020, Soon-Shiong blocked the editorial board from making any endorsement in the Democratic presidential primaries, overruling its intended endorsement of Elizabeth Warren; the paper did endorse Biden in the general election.

During Soon-Shiong's ownership of the Los Angeles Times, his daughter, Nika Soon-Shiong, became interested in the newspaper and sought to influence coverage, in both the newsroom and opinion pages. Many Times staffers expressed alarm at the younger Soon-Shiong's activity, which they viewed as meddling, including privately and publicly contacting staffers to advocate her views.

As it happens, Nika Soon-Shiong has her own Wikipedia entry.

Nika Soon-Shiong (born February 26, 1993) is an American politician and activist who served as a Public Safety Commissioner of West Hollywood from 2021 to 2022. She is the founder and Executive Director of the Fund for Guaranteed Income and was also part of the Compton Pledge and Long Beach Pledge guaranteed income programs.

Guaranteed income? Sounds a little woozy to me. During her time as a Public Safety Commissioner of West Hollywood,

As a commissioner representing concerns of the citizens, she questioned policing in the city. Soon-Shiong was met with backlash for this, with [West Hollywood council member Lindsey] Horvath responding to the backlash against Soon-Shiong saying it was "rooted in racism". In June 2022, the West Hollywood City Council voted to reduce the number of sheriffs in the city and replace them with unarmed security guards, a move which Soon-Shiong called "pragmatic and fiscally responsible", but said it "could have gone further."

It's worth noting that the questioning from Halperin, Spicer, and Turrentine was generally fawning and didn't mention his daughter's far-left politics or her own meddling at the Times.

While I mentioned an LA Times story favorably in last Saturday's post because, unlike any other media coverage, it gave a timeline and hard specifics of the so-called "Sunset Fire" that threw into question the other sensationalist coverage, the Times itself hasn't provided general coverage of the fires that even its own opinion writer wished it would:

Once we reached our destination I began what would turn into a 24-hour obsession with fire maps — on The Times website, the Watch Duty app, protect.genasys.com. None of which told me what I wanted to know: How fast was the fire moving toward my home and those of my friends and neighbors?

In fact, it took Fox News a week finally to put up the sort of map people had been wanting to see, not the Times (click in the image for a larger view; there's also more info at the link):

In fact, the Halperin interview had me scratching my head. When the Chandler family owned the Times, especially during the Norman Chandler era, there was a sense of community responsibility that went with publishing a regional paper. Indeed, there was something of a consensus among influential figures, certainly the Chandlers, but others like H F Ahmanson, the Disneys, the Gettys, and Leo S Bing, on what was good for the region -- and this would have included a reliable water supply and effective fire protection.

What puzzled me most about the Soon-Shiong interview was Patrick's apparent shallowness about the continuing need for this kind of leadership. Instead, he just makes glib statements on how “competence matters”. Where does he fit in? Where does the Times fit in? If our current leaders aren't competent, what are influential citizens going to do about it? I'm getting no sense of direction.

Instead he hears people like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg making noises, and he thinks maybe he should look like he's making the same sort of noises -- but there's no there there.

The Empty Reservoir

The current news about the Los Angrles fires carries a remarkable echo of the great LA noir film Chinatown (1974). The MacGuffin of that film involves the suspicion of Hollis Mulwray, the Chief Engineer of the Los Angeles Departmnent of Water and Power, that huge quantities of water are being diverted from a city reservoir every night despite a drought. Mulwray is murdered as he tries to investigate, which leaves private detective Jake Gittes to unravel the mystery.

Much of this year's story involves Janisse Quiñones, the Chief Engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, and why a city reservoir intended to store water for the Pacific Palisades area was empty and unable to provide water to fight fires in that part of the city, which resulted in local hydrants going dry at a critical time.

On Mayor Karen Bass's orders, the city maxed out its budget to 'attract private-sector talent', hiring Department of Water and Power (LADWP) CEO Janisse Quiñones on a $750,000 salary in May – almost double that of her predecessor.

Now, Quiñones is being blamed by LA Fire Department (LAFD) insiders for leaving a nearby reservoir disconnected and fire hydrants broken for months, DailyMail.com can reveal, leading to firefighters running out of water as they battled the devastating Palisades Fire this week.

. . .The Santa Ynez Reservoir is designed to hold 117 million gallons of drinking water. But it was taken offline in recent months to repair a tear in its cover that exposed the water and potentially impacted its drinkability.

. . . Former DWP general manager Martin Adams told the paper that having the Santa Ynez reservoir would have helped fight the Palisades Fire that wiped out most of the Pacific Palisades neighborhood this week.

'Would Santa Ynez have helped? Yes, to some extent. Would it have saved the day? I don't think so,' Adams said.

He said the crucial reservoir had been offline 'for a while' before the fires, but didn't know the precise date.

But a source in the LA Fire Department (LAFD) told DailyMail.com that DWP officials told them 'had it not been closed they probably would have been ok and had enough water for the fire.'

It's hard to think Martin Adams isn't being intentionally vague about the whole issue. The reservoir had been "closed for a while" indeed:

This reservoir would have saved the Pacific Palisades. https://t.co/IklSey11YW

— Jacob Shell (@JacobAShell) January 11, 2025

In other words, it was closed on his own watch, too. Prior to his 2023 retirement, he had been with DWP for 39 years, rising to the position of Chief Engineer and General Manager in 2019. If the Santa Ynez reservoir had been empty since 2009, he must certainly have known about it and been in a position to do something about it as well.

So what's the story? DWP documentation says the reservoir was taken out of service on July 23, 2009 as a result of requirements by the US Environmental Protection Agency to implement a number of improvements, but especially to cover the reservoir. The report says, among other things, that the reservoir was drained twice to accomplish this, first from October 1, 2009 to May 1, 2010, and then from October 1, 2010 to May 1, 2011, with a floating cover finally installed in January 2011. The project was supposedly complete on December 19, 2012. However, the X thread raises the question of whether the reservoir cover was ever effective, with images showing periodic draining and repair, but it's definitely been empty since 2022:

I read a story yesterday about the damaged cover from a while back, and the picture that accompanied it was a coverless, empty reservoir dated September 9, 2022

— GlobalTrvlr (@GlobalTrlr) January 11, 2025

Former DWP Chief Engineer Adams minimized the potential role the Santa Ynez reservoir may have had in fighting the fires, but even he acknowledged that it would have helped:

"It could have made some difference in supporting the pressure loss early on, but it would not have lasted the whole fire," Martin Adams, who recently retired after 40 years of working at LADWP, most recently as General Manager, told ABC News.

"It might have helped for a little bit, but it wouldn't have been the be-all end-all," Adams said.

As it waas, the Palisades fire crews could rely only on three tanks holding 1 million gallons each, which were quickly exhausted. Another 117 million gallons from the reservoir would definitely have helped -- this would be more than 30 times the amount the crews had available. The reservoir was emptied most recently on Adams's watch and never repaired. Sounds like he has some 'splaining to do, whatever Janisse Quiñones may have to say.

Crisis Management? What's That?

sd1002055

Nation Gets Preview Of Gavin Newsom Presidency https://t.co/b0iygizkHt pic.twitter.com/Hqmnt2STLs

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) January 10, 2025

As I seem to keep pointing out here, I've worked in the disaster recovery and crisis management fields, and what puzzles me about the state and local response to the LA fires is the total ignorance by anyone in leadership, either at the political or operational level, of basic principles. For instance, there needs to be a central figure who can deliver regular and credible reports on what's being done, like the FBI's James Kallstrom with the TWA 800 explosion.

With no one competent available to fill this role, it's fallen to Governor Newsom and Mayor Bass. Both of them, rather than being available to answer questions, have hidden from the press and stonewalled or ducked obvious questions about the dry fire hydrants or the empty reservoir. A competent Kallstrom type would acknowledge the situation and go on to point out what's being tone to correct it. If necessary, he'd have the pull within the orgnization to insist that something in fact be done.

It isn't just me who's noticing this. Via the LA Times, which has been turnng itself around in recent weeks, Mary McNamara, an op=ed writer, details her frustration at trying to find any specific information on what was burning where:

I began what would turn into a 24-hour obsession with fire maps — on The Times website, the Watch Duty app, protect.genasys.com. None of which told me what I wanted to know: How fast was the fire moving toward my home and those of my friends and neighbors?

. . . But as evening approached and my fingers began to spasm from working my phone, I relented and turned on the television.

It was a huge mistake.

. . . The images were horrific, but they offered no information beyond what had already been provided by many news outlets, including and especially The Times, as well as hundreds of residents posting on social media. The anchors made the appropriate comments of shock and grief while I writhed in my seat wondering where all the various fire lines actually were at that moment.

Coverage was then interrupted by a press conference headed by Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, ostensibly to provide updates on the various fires — including, presumably, Eaton. This crisis has not, by any measure, been Bass’ finest hour. She left the country despite warnings of upcoming high wind and fire risk conditions and returned to find the city ablaze. She has refused to answer questions and criticism about her departure, the city’s apparent lack of preparedness, reports of lag time between the eruption of the Palisades fire and a coordinated response and the clear under-staffing of the Los Angeles Fire Department.

I did not expect her to address any of these things at this press conference — she was in a crisis situation and this was not the time for that. I did, however, expect her to provide updates. You know, to tell us exactly what was going on. Maybe pull out some maps that revealed not just evacuation areas but some sense of actual fire lines. Discuss how much water and fire retardant had been dropped when and where, and whether it was proving effective. Something.

This didn't happen, and it's continued not to happen. After a couple of quiet days with no updates and the media starting to pull out, the Palisades fire begsnm to spread again Friday night, with new mandatory evacuations in Brentwood, another highly affluent area adjacent to Pacific Palisades. Again, there are no fire maps, no discussion of what's being done and whether anything is working.

What's remarkable is that Pacific Palisades and Brentwood are loci for the wealthy Democrat donors who virtue-signal their luxury beliefs. In fact, if the fire spreads to Brentwood, it could threaten to leap the 405 freeway, and if it does, it will spread to Beverly Hills and Bel Air. If you think there are expensive homes in Pacific Palisades and Brentwood, you ain't seen nothing. There are truly powerful people in Beverly Hills and Bel Air. I suspect they will not tolerate the fire spreading that far.

Petition · Demand the Immediate Resignation of Mayor Karen Bass - Los Angeles, United States · https://t.co/OE7YKlXuna https://t.co/M8U9mtFnAI

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) January 10, 2025

Remember it was these same donors who lost patience with Biden and demanded he drop out of the presidential race. Nancy Pelosi was just their catspaw. This appears to be the current situation:

Last night, the fire shifted eastward, threatening areas closer to the 405 freeway, including Mandeville Canyon, Brentwood, and potentially putting UCLA in its crosshairs. Firefighting efforts have been redirected to combat the eastward progression, with additional aircraft and strike teams deployed.

An evacuation warning has been issued for an area bordering UCLA’s campus, reaching the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Veteran Avenue, an intersection that directly borders the UCLA campus. While there is no immediate fire danger to the campus, the university is on high alert.

I don't think the powers that be will tolerate the fire spreading that far.