Firefighters' union president exposes abject government incompetence that flung gasoline onto wildfire crisis

The president of a firefighters' union in Los Angeles said that incompetence among local leaders made the wildfire crisis far worse than it should have been.

United Firefighters of Los Angeles County President Freddie Escobar made the comments to Breitbart News on Monday.

'The LAFD has been neglected by its leaders. ... We are woefully understaffed.'

“I’ve been on the board [of the Los Angeles Fire Department] for 17 years, and for years now, for decades, the LAFD has been neglected by its leaders,” Escobar said. “They have not addressed a woefully understaffed fire department. We need 62 new stations; 100 more firefighters and medics, more engines, trucks, medics. We are woefully understaffed.”

Southern California has been devastated by several wildfires that have killed more than 24 people and destroyed more than 13,000 homes and businesses. Critics have lambasted local lawmakers over various shortcomings in the emergency response.

Escobar went on to confirm that personnel were not pre-deployed for the wildfires because the budget-strapped department did not want to pay the overtime costs.

He said that L.A. Fire Chief Kristin Crowley had made an “operating funds decision” to deny pre-deployment that could have saved lives and lessened the destruction from the fires.

Escobar claimed fire officials decided the day before the fires “not to staff every single resource, which would give you additional manpower with the field on red-flag [high wind] days."

Although he affirmed that the system of fire hydrants was not "meant" to be able to handle wildfires at the scale of the disaster, Escobar said the decision to keep empty the Santa Ynez Reservoir over Pacific Palisades contributed to the destruction.

He also said that firefighters have been asked to deal with increasing calls regarding homeless issues while their budget decreases.

“We cannot sustain what is going on, with the calls on the homeless, with the staffing we have today,” Escobar continued.

Escobar, however, said that DEI policies were not a significant source of the problems at the fire department.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, has called for an independent investigation into what led to water shortages at hydrants during the emergency response to the fires.

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