California wildfires are not a new phenomenon, but their increasing frequency and intensity have sparked significant concern. Experts and environmental scientists have long warned about the growing risks due to climate change, poor forest management, and unchecked urban sprawl into fire-prone areas. Yet, despite these predictions, leadership at various levels has often fallen short in implementing proactive measures to mitigate fire risks or allocating tax payer dollars due to different priorities.

Warnings and Missed Opportunities

Following the 2018 Camp Fire, recommendations were made to enhance wildfire preparedness in Los Angeles. Advanced alert systems were urged to ensure timely evacuation notices, while improved evacuation planning called for efficient, well-developed routes to handle large populations. Proactive forest management highlighted the need for regular controlled burns and vegetation thinning to reduce wildfire risks. Infrastructure hardening recommended upgrading building materials and undergrounding power lines to prevent ignitions. Community education programs focused on raising awareness about wildfire risks and preparedness. Lastly, inter-agency coordination emphasized stronger collaboration among emergency services to ensure a unified and effective response.

LA residents can ask if their leaders had delivered on previous recommendations and hold their leadership accountable. Certainly for the homeowner who lost a lifetime of memories in a home lost, the answer is no. The images certainly require leaders to be accountable and provide answers on whether they allocated sufficient resources to mitigate the impact of the known risk of wildfires given their responsibility to address previous recommendations.

Forest Management: A Critical Oversight

The failure to prioritize forest management has been one of the most glaring oversights. Decades of fire suppression policies, combined with the insufficient funding for proactive measures, allowed fuel loads to accumulate to dangerous levels. Controlled burns and forest thinning, essential for reducing fire intensity, needed greater urgwncy.

Broader Implications for Disaster Preparedness

The lack of action on wildfire prevention is an example of a broader issue: leadership’s failure to address other potential environmental disasters. Earthquakes, floods, and rising sea levels pose similar risks, yet prevention efforts often lag behind. Earthquake retrofitting for older buildings, improved flood defenses, growing tree canopy while managing forests to prevent fires and infrastructure upgrades to withstand climate change are often deprioritized or ignored until tragedy strikes.

This pattern of reactive governance instead of proactive planning leaves communities vulnerable. Leaders have a moral and practical responsibility to address risks before they turn into full-scale disasters. Ignoring warnings, whether about fires, earthquakes, or floods, amounts to negligence, especially when lives and livelihoods are at stake.

The Way Forward: Leadership Accountability

To prevent future disasters, leaders must take a long-term view of environmental risks. This includes investing in prevention strategies, listening to scientific experts, and enacting policies that prioritize public safety over political convenience and budget limitations. The consequences of inaction—devastated communities, loss of life, and economic ruin—should serve as a stark reminder of the cost of ignoring the warnings. Leaders that ignore the needs of their residents and  overwhelming expectations that their homes are protected  against major disasters against flooding, fires, tsunamis  and earthquakes. If they are unwilling to do what is necessary to protect their citizens they should resign.

Leaders who neglect the urgent needs of their residents and fail to meet the critical expectation of safeguarding homes from major disasters such as flooding, fires, tsunamis, and earthquakes are failing in their responsibilities. Especially when residents have voted on initiatives directing their leaders to take action.  Those unwilling to take necessary actions to protect their citizens should step down.  In 2014, in the middle of a severe drought voters approved  $7.5 billion to build projects to stockpile more water. Any reservoir has yet to be built.

Pacific county residents need to look at state, city and county government to ask the question are they doing what is needed to protect home owners against flooding, earthquakes, tsunamis and fires.