LA Wild Fires: Helping Hands & Pointing Fingers

Our hearts and prayers go out to Southern California due to the wildfires devastation.

We have two sons living in LA–one in West Hollywood who narrowly escaped the flames, and the other in Valley Village. We also have hundreds of friends and YWAMers living and serving there–so the devastation is close to home.

Our initial response should be “helping hands” in prayer, giving, and rebuilding. Our second must be “pointing fingers” at those who exacerbated the tragedy so future natural disasters can be mitigated. 

LA Wild Fires: Pointing Fingers & Helping Hands

Let’s start by pointing fingers. The Bible calls that repentance–the need to admit sins and mistakes and change your behavior.

There needs to be some major repentance in California. Politicians and environmentalists (and ultimately unwise voters) are greatly to blame for the extent of the damage.

No one can say it better than Victor Davis Hanson:

“I’m here in California. I’ve been a lifelong resident of the state, fifth generation to live in the same house. I had a house in the Sierra, and it almost burned down three years ago during the Aspen Fire, and I’m speaking on the evening when you’ve all heard about the disastrous fire in Los Angeles.

As I’m speaking on a Wednesday night, there have been 15,000 acres, 1,000 structures destroyed [now up to 40,000 acres and 12,00 buildings]. And how do we characterize this? Everybody’s talking about the Santa Ana winds, climate change—I mean everybody, the people in power.

But it was preventable. And once it started, this fire, it could have been assuaged. You could have had it lessened, that the severity didn’t have to be as catastrophic. So, I would characterize it as a DEI–Green New Deal hydrogen bomb. It’s something out of “Dante’s Inferno.”

And what I mean by that is, it’s a systems breakdown, a civilizational collapse. When you look at the people in charge, [California Gov.] Gavin Newsom flew in, to sort of do these performance-art stunts, but he has systematically ensured that water out of the Sacramento River and the watershed of Northern California would go out to the sea, rather than into the aqueduct, so Los Angeles didn’t have sufficient amounts of water.

He bragged not very long ago that he blew up four dams on the Klamath River. They provided 80,000 homes with clean hydroelectric power. They offered recreation, flood control, irrigation. He blew them up.

California’s fire management, whether we look at the Paradise Fire or the Aspen Fire near where I’m speaking, it destroyed 60 million trees. We have no timber industry in California. [Newsom’s] dismantled it.

We don’t clean the forest. We don’t let loggers come in and have a viable livelihood by harvesting trees. It’s sort of considered natural to let these things burn or to at least create the conditions in which they will inevitably be burned.

It’s almost as if we don’t like humans. We worry about grubs and worms and birds and the ecosystem.

The second breakdown was the mayor, Karen Bass, was in Africa. You tell me why the mayor of the third-largest city in the United States at fire season, when she had been warned and warned for days on end that the Santa Ana winds were up to 100 miles an hour in the evening, and there was a danger of fire, and she goes off to Africa for the inauguration of the president of Ghana.  She’s been bragging for the last two years that her goal was to make sure [the Fire Department] was diverse and inclusive.

That can be good if it’s competent. But when you announce that 70% of your hiring will not be meritocratic, but will be based on diversity, equity, inclusion, then you’re not putting the interest of your constituents first.

There were not even enough, there wasn’t enough water pressure in Pacific Palisades. Pacific Palisades is not where I live. It’s one of the wealthiest, most exclusive neighborhoods in the United States. If they don’t have water, then no one’s going to get water, believe me.

There’s not enough insurance. There were famous actors that didn’t have insurance. Why? Because industry is overregulated, it’s fraught with people who make fraudulent claims, and the insurance industry knows that California is hostile to it, but more importantly that it will never clean up its forest or take preventive, time-tried, ancient protocols to lessen the dangers of fire.

And so put it all together, whether it’s a deliberate policy to not store water, not preserve water. Last year was one of the wettest years that we’ve had. We’ve had three out of the last four years have been very wet. We had a huge snowpack. We had rivers that were running in 19th-century fashion, but out to the sea to save the delta smelt.

So, it was a total systems collapse from the idea of not spending money on irrigation, storage, water, fire prevention, force management, a viable insurance industry, a DEI hierarchy. You put it all together and it’s something like a DEI-Green New Deal hydrogen bomb.

Gavin Newsom was fiddling, as he’s almost Nero Newsom. And this has been something that is just unimaginable, this system’s breakdown.

And to finish, what we’re seeing in California is a state with 40 million people. And yet the people who run it feel that it should return to a 19th-century pastoral condition. They are decivilizing the state, and deindustrializing the state, and de-farming the state, but they’re not telling the 40 million people that their lifestyles will have to revert back to the 19th century when you had no protection from fire, you didn’t have enough water in California, you didn’t have enough power, you didn’t pump oil.

So, we are deliberately making these decisions not to develop energy, not to develop a timber industry, not to protect the insurance industry, not to protect houses and property. And we’re doing it in almost a purely nihilistic fashion. 

This is one of the most alarming symptoms of a society gone mad, and if this continues, and if this were to spread to other states, we would become a Third World country if we’re not in parts already.”

 *  *  *

When will Californians wise up? Ward Clark states:

With current events in the once-Golden state, it’s tempting to ask California voters one question: “What more will it take? What more proof do you need that the Democrat cabal that has been running your state has no idea what they are doing? What more will it take to get you to change your voting habits? It’s a perfect storm of stupid governance in California.

Along with repentance before God and in voting/leadership, now is the time for the “helping hands” of great faith to rebuild the “City of Angels.” It can be done through prayer, hard work, and the churches in the area opening their doors to serve and provide hope –while thanking God for the courageous firefighters.  

Los Angeles is the “female head” of America–the city of the greatest influence in the USA. (Washington, D.C. is the “male head” i.e. the seat of authority). It may take years for LA to recover from this natural/political disaster. But it will through the grace and power of God and the “helping hands” of the Church.

Here’s a noble goal: Spiritual and physical revival in Los Angeles by the next summer Olympics which will be held in LA on July 14-30, 2028. 

Let’s welcome the world to a changed city, state (and nation).

Deep repentance and great faith can take us there.