This story was originally published here.y slate and hereclimate deskcollaboration.
That firestorm What has been ravaging Los Angeles and Southern California since Tuesday afternoon is nothing short of a disaster. Thanks to dry weather and explosive Santa Ana winds (some reaching close to 100 mph), wildfires began to spread across Pacific Palisades, Topanga and Malibu and spread quickly, killing tens of thousands of residents. were turned into victims. hurry.
By that evening, the Palisade Fire had burned more than 1,260 acres and had reached as far as Santa Monica, destroying homes and schools. Another fire in the hills around Eaton County spread over 10,000 acres as far as Pasadena, forcing even quicker evacuations. The wind and smoke were so dangerous that firefighting companies temporarily suspended operations, and LA County made an official request. any Residents with firefighting experience can participate and help. By early Wednesday morning, more fires were burning in the county, burning hundreds of acres and causing Palisades hydrants to run out of water.
As of this writing, the mass destruction has killed two people and destroyed more than 1,000 buildings, including community facilities, homes, schools, libraries, shops and restaurants. For many Angeleno residents, cell service is down and electricity is out, making it difficult to get the best updates in real time. TV reporters were helping residents escape, while others were forced to evacuate the area they were reporting from. Cellphone video of the destroyed building is going viral on social media. Air pollution has reached dangerous levels. Tens of thousands of Californians are under evacuation orders, and more than 1.5 million of them are without power due to preemptive utility shutoffs and infrastructure damage from the flames. The storm is expected to continue through Thursday, leaving areas of the Pacific Coast Highway in tatters.
So of course it’s conspiracy time.
It comes a day after Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook and Instagram will no longer fact-check information posts, and persistent online scams have hampered federal efforts to support North Carolinians in their recovery from Hurricane Helen. Just a few months after we received it earlier this year, we get a preview of how the United States will likely experience and respond to such intense climate disasters in the near future. In the vacuum left by mainstream TV networks, which made no mention of climate change in their coverage of the fires, malicious digital actors swooped in with their own methods.
The attacks by Elon Musk and others are not only false, they demonstrate a deep ignorance of how firefighting water supplies work.
Before California had even woken up to amber skies Wednesday morning, right-wing media began attacking the Los Angeles Fire Department chief. The first lesbian woman to attack an LA Fire Department chief, she has already been the target of ugly attacks purely based on her identity. . Other local celebrities, such as Mark Hamill and Steve Guttenberg, have made a stern statement about his escape or even helped the fire brigade clear the road, but the conservative actor and Palisades Palisades homeowner James Woods instead denied that climate change played any role in the fires and blamed “diversity.” It quotes a profile of the LAFD director.
There are many worthy reasons to criticize LAFD. Charges of underpaying incarcerated Californians drafted to help put out fires and creating a harassing workplace while granting immunity to firefighters who have misbehaved over the past few years (an urgent issue raised by Chief Kristin Crowley) )no see. hired to solve it). But in cases like Libs on TikTok, the fact that women are out there and the LAFD has made a concerted effort to address how LA firefighters from minority backgrounds have been mistreated by their superiors is the real reason these fires are so overwhelming.
Others recalled a tweet from Donald Trump during his first presidency in which he criticized Gov. Gavin Newsom for not conducting enough controlled burns to remove dry vegetation from the forest floor, leaving behind additional embers for 2019’s devastating fires. I did it. There is some truth to this. For nearly 100 years, the United States banned the indigenous practice of prescribed burns before realizing the benefits of proactively limiting lethal blazes and re-encouraging the practice. In fact, California has restarted controlled burns since the late 2010s, rendering Trump’s tweet (as always) inaccurate.
Nonetheless, prescribed burns in Cali have been halted under the Biden administration, fueled by fears over the trauma from the wildfires that scarred the Golden State that decade and budget cuts to environmental agencies like the Forest Service (which I wrote about decision). This was criticized and criticized by Slate in 2021, and Forest Service officials once again stopped deploying prescribed burns last October due to exaggerated fears that the practice could lead to another accidental outrage. (One way to understand why these commentators are unreliable: Many of those who criticize LA government’s fire preparedness have also consistently advocated for cuts to the city’s budget and services for years.)
But fair criticism from the right almost stops there. Trump updated his attack on the “Gavin Newscom” by referencing a “water proclamation resolution” on incoming water supplies, which Newsom’s office said never existed. Musk and his allies attacked Mayor Karen Bass for allegedly encouraging the aforementioned hydrant water shortages due to poor management of reservoirs. Not only is this untrue, but it completely misunderstands how water supply for firefighting works.
Water lines supplying fire hydrants were damaged by the fire, and widespread demand for LA’s abundant water reserves outpaced the speed at which officials could refill the tanks (and the fire blocked the route). Additionally, years of drought have meant water pressures have been lower than ideal on the West Coast for longer than ideal, especially in higher elevation areas. (Drought caused by climate change is also one of the reasons these fires spread so quickly; barren foliage and a general lack of moisture are fuels for the spread of fires.)
There is no such document as a Water Restoration Declaration. This is pure fiction.
The Governor’s focus is not on politics, but on protecting people and ensuring firefighters have all the resources they need. https://t.co/5WnnlrP3Wl
— Governor Newsom Press Office (@GovPressOffice) January 8, 2025
Conspiracies are not limited to rights either. A common talking point among Internet leftists and LA Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong is accusing Bass of cutting the LAFD budget to fund local police. However, the salary of LA firefighters isresurrectThe overall reduction in the department’s budget this year was a tiny fraction of overall coffers, according to Bass’ budget.
Here’s the real ugly truth: This is how every major climate disaster will unfold online from now on. There will be some criticisms and expressions of anger that are more fair and reasonable than others. But in an ecosystem where social media outlets intentionally disrupt the ability of social media outlets to provide real-time, reliable updates to their users, those affected by such disasters are literally left behind. In the dark.
Governments are in no way responsible for the impact and recovery of wildfires and storms. Nevertheless, while it takes time and effort to put out fires and convey reliable information in the public interest, opportunistic liars do not need such time to further their goals. After decades of climate denial that funded the fossil industry, far-right figures like Marjorie Taylor Greene have argued that Jewish space lasers are the cause of the fires and that “they” are “changing the weather” to target North Carolinians. You can get away with claiming you have “control.”
As brutal fires like the California fires continue to spread, there is only so much we can do to debunk individual conspiracy theories. And as climate change brings more storms, fires, earthquakes and other inevitable tragedies this year and beyond, be prepared to deal with these ambushes as well. Climate change is not only increasing record-breaking weather events, it’s also increasing snake oil salesmen.
