"The Wind Shows Us How Close to the Edge We Are"

"I See Your Hair Is Burnin'; Hills Are Filled with Fire"

Some Things Never Change

I remember being six years old at elementary school in the San Fernando Valley, a suburb of Los Angeles. I have vivid memories of ashes coming out of the sky from local wildfires as if they were drops of rain as we played at recess.

I remember the Berkeley/Oakland Hills fire in 1991 that destroyed over 3,000 residences, and the devastation outside my office window where only the chimneys remained from burned-out homes.

I remember the Laguna Beach fire in 1993 and my parents’ fear of losing the family house in which I grew up. I recall driving through the area and seeing the ruins of over 500 destroyed houses overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

I remember flying from Orange County to Austin in October 2007 and the view from the plane when it looked like all of Southern California was on fire. Over 1,500 homes were destroyed in that conflagration.

Last week I repeatedly checked maps to see if our daughter’s apartment in Santa Monica had been put under an evacuation order. Luckily, the mandatory “leave zone” remained two blocks away from her place.

From Joan Didion’s Los Angeles Notebook in Slouching Towards Bethlehem (written in 1968 and the title of this Substack) to The Doors in L.A. Woman (released in 1971 and the subtitle of this Substack) to Bad Religion in Los Angeles is Burning (2004), modern culture knows about these winds and the fires.

History may not repeat itself, but it rhymes.

There Have Been Big Changes

When I grew up in Southern California we used to have Santa Ana wind conditions 4-5 times per year — usually in the September-January months. You always worried about wildfires — it was part of living in the region.

My family moved back to Orange County from 2004-2012 and it was clear that the climate had changed — Santa Ana winds occurred much more frequently (8-12 times per year) and they were spread over many more months.

In 1974 there were about 7 million people in Los Angeles County. Now that number is around 10 million — an increase of almost 43%. A massive number of people moved into the same space, creating higher density throughout the region and expansion into underdeveloped wilderness areas.

The infrastructure of the state — the roads, the water lines, the electric grid — have aged over the past 50 years, and the maintenance of these critical assets has not kept up with the needs of the population. The American Society of Civil Engineers gave California an overall C- on 16 different infrastructure categories, with the highest grade being a C+. This despite California having one of the highest overall tax burdens in the country.

Unserious Behavior in a Serious World

In my upcoming book on Systems Leadership I talk about the widely pervasive unserious actions and behaviors of both politicians and business leaders that are ever present in the news and our lives. I highlight six easily observable examples of these behaviors, and we’ve witnessed many of them in the context of the LA fires. Three of them specifically are easy to identify:

1. Ignoring Changes You Don’t Like — With such a massive increase in population, and with changes to the climate (whether driven largely by humans or not), it is the responsibility of political leadership to prepare for the world as it exists. How could California’s politicians not have anticipated potential fire storms and asked what protections need to be implemented to take care of people and property in the state right now? If one believes that extreme weather events are more likely to happen due to climate change, you’d think leaders would have plans in place to address them. While setting up goals for an energy transition is a worthy endeavor, doing it without thinking about the people who live in the state today is an abdication of responsibility. Everyone in SoCal knows about Santa Ana winds. Everyone.

2. Indulging in Self-Righteousness — While the occurrence of these fires is not the governor’s fault (the problems were decades in the making) the population sees through his behavior when he called a special session of the Legislature to “safeguard California values” after the November election. 52% of the country just elected a new President — and California’s leader immediately focused on virtue signaling. Ok — that’s a choice — that’s fine. But don’t complain when people remember behaviors like that when they watch California burn and they see that current leadership did not get the job done during a crisis. The citizens are not stupid.

3. Failing to Show Spine When Necessary — Great leaders focus on critical issues that are important even when taking a stand may not be popular to certain constituencies. For example, California has spent over $11 billion on a high-speed rail project that is currently behind schedule, is not up and running, and is lacking over $100 billion to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco. Current plans say commuters will be able to go from Bakersfield to Merced sometime between 2030 and 2033 on these trains (5-8 years from now). Los Angeles to San Francisco on high-speed rail? Try getting a straight answer on when that will happen. A rational leader would shut down this catastrophic project and divert resources to where they are needed (infrastructure anyone?) instead of continuing with this waste of taxpayer money.

I Do Blame the Politicians

Some have asserted that fires are going to happen in California anyway and we shouldn’t blame the politicians.

I call bulls**t.

We know these fires are going to happen now and in the future. We know the topography of California. We know the impact of the weather and climate. We know that the population has boomed in the last 50 years. To shrug our shoulders and say, “Hey, sh** happens — it’s California,” is a failure of leadership.

The frustration of the population comes not only from seeing an inability to deal with a crisis that was easily anticipated; there are also many other examples of government failure in the state. Consider California’s growing homeless problem: even after the state spent ~$5 billion per year for the last five years, our cities are a mess and the number of homeless went up in 2024. Almost 25% of the country’s homeless are in California.

While the catastrophe of the last week did not develop in the last 12 or 24 months, the politicians have earned their blame. They were in charge of protecting the citizens. They were responsible for anticipating problems and ensuring that the right systems and resources were in place.

The citizens are not stupid.

People may not like that Trump said California’s current leaders are incompetent, but that word is appropriate to describe decades of failed political leadership in the state.

The current mayor of Los Angeles, the governor, and many others are being held accountable while they sit in the chairs of power. Their actions will be observed under a microscope — both what they do right now and how they behaved leading up to this.

They failed to do their jobs. They should not be let off the hook.