President-elect Donald Trump and some social media users and experts have accused Los Angeles fatal fire California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Democrats’ environmental policies contributed to the fire danger and debris.

As of January 12, authorities counted at least 16 deaths, more than 14,000 hectares (35,000 acres) of land burned, and thousands of buildings damaged or destroyed.

Some social media users retweeted Trump’s 2018 and 2019 criticize California’s forest management policies, including false statements issued by the then-president as firefighters battled previous wildfires.

It’s not uncommon for Trump to make false claims about his political opponents during natural disasters. In 2018, he falsely claimed that “Democrats” exaggerated Hurricane Maria death toll in Puerto Rico. In October 2024, he fabricated a claim that North Carolina’s Democratic governor blocked federal aid from flowing into the state in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.

As Los Angeles wildfire victims are devastated, we fact-checked these viral claims to understand how or if California’s water policies and forest management contributed to the disaster.

Trump misled California water policy

Los Angeles firefighters raced to extinguish fires in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood on January 7 and 8, but hydrants in the area had low water pressure and some stopped pumping water.

In a Jan. 8 Truth Society post, Trump blamed Newsom’s management for the water problems and said Newsom refused to allow “beautiful, clean, fresh water to flow into California.”

“Governor Gavin (Newsom) refuses to sign the water restoration declaration put before him, which would allow millions of gallons of water (excess rain and snowmelt from the north) to flow daily into many areas of California, including those currently Burning in an almost apocalyptic way,” Trump said. “He wanted to protect a largely worthless fish called smelt by reducing water (it didn’t work!), but he didn’t care about the people of California. Now, the ultimate price is being paid.”

Trump’s post appeared to blame the water restrictions on a statewide water management plan that captures rain and snow flowing out of Northern California. But experts say the plans will not impact fire response.

Mark Gold, director of water scarcity solutions at the Natural Resources Defense Council and a board member of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, said Southern California has ample water storage.

Experts say the local water shortage is due to the city’s infrastructure being unable to handle the fires that have broken out in the Palisades and elsewhere.

“It doesn’t matter what’s happening right now in the Bay Delta or the Colorado River or the Eastern Mountains,” Gold said. “We have all this water stored now. The problem is, when you think about things like firefighting, it’s a more local question of where is your water. Do you have enough local storage?”

Trump’s reference to a “Water Restoration Statement” that Newsom refused to sign is puzzling because no such document appears to exist. Newsom’s press team said on social media that “there is no such thing as a water restoration statement — that is pure fiction.”

Trump’s transition team did not immediately respond to an email seeking clarification. After the article was published, a Trump spokesperson emailed PolitiFact about a plan during Trump’s first term that would have diverted more water from federal Central Valley projects to the San Joaquin Valley. farmers.

Newsom and then-California Attorney General Xavier Becerra sued the Trump administration over the plan, saying it violated protections for endangered species, including Chinook salmon and Delta smelt — a A slender 2- to 3-inch fish considered endangered under California Endangered Species Protection. species law.

But there’s a problem with Trump’s logic: The Central Valley project doesn’t provide water to Los Angeles. The regional water district gets some water from the state water project, which also collects water from the Delta Bay region and shares some reservoirs and infrastructure with the Central Valley Project. But much of the additional water in Trump’s plan would be sent to the San Joaquin Valley, and it’s a mistake to link water management further north to Los Angeles’ firefighting challenges.

Experts say the local water system failed because the city’s infrastructure was built to handle regular structure fires, not large-scale wildfires in multiple communities.

Ann Jeffers, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Michigan who studies fire protection engineering, said she is not aware of any industry standards for designing city water systems to fight fires like those in the Palisades.

Jeffers said dryness and high winds mean “these fire events may exceed the given design basis if they exist at all.”

Chris Field, a professor and climate scientist at Stanford University, said Climate change worsens these conditions.

Three main water tanks near the Palisades, with a capacity of about 1 million gallons (3.8 million liters), were filled in preparation for the fire due to bad weather. Janisse Quinones, CEO and chief engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said at a press conference on January 8 that as of 3 a.m. on January 8, the water tanks were completely empty. Although water continues to flow to affected areas, demand for water is growing faster than the system’s supply.

“There’s water in the mainline, but it can’t get up the hill because we can’t fill the tanks fast enough,” Quinones said. “And we can’t reduce the amount of water we provide to the fire department in the tanks because we’re trying to balance firefighting with water.”

According to a report by the Los Angeles Times on January 10, a reservoir near Pacific Palisades, which is part of the city’s water supply system, was closed for repairs when the fire broke out. If the reservoir can be operated, the water pressure problem may be alleviated. .

Other social media users claimed that slow construction of California’s reservoirs was causing fire hydrants to dry up. But it was local infrastructure failures that caused the hydrant problems, not regional water storage, so it would be a mistake to blame it on the construction schedules of these projects.

“In 2014, Californians voted overwhelmingly to spend billions on water storage and reservoirs,” Libs, a conservative TikTok account, posted on January 8. There is no water in the hydrant now. “

California voters approved a ballot measure in 2014 that earmarked $2.7 billion for water storage projects, but so far, no projects have been completed. Only one of these projects is a new reservoir, located in the Sacramento Valley, about 724 kilometers (450 miles) from Los Angeles. It will begin operations in 2033.

A closer project is the Chino Basin Initiative, which will increase storage capacity in the system about 100 kilometers (60 miles) west of Los Angeles.

Trump blamed California’s forest management for deadly wildfires in 2018 and 2019.

In a 2019 X post, Trump said Newsom must “clean up” the forest floor. In another post in 2019, Trump wrote, “Give California billions of dollars to fight forest fires that would never have happened if the forests were properly managed,” and threatened to withhold federal emergency Administration (FEMA).

Social media users who re-shared the claim in the context of the Los Angeles disaster used a 2018 video of Trump and then-Governor-elect Newsom at the scene of a destroyed mobile home park in Northern California. In the video, Trump talks about the need to rake and clear forest floors to prevent wildfires.

“Trump warned him years ago,” Fox News host Jesse Watters said during a Jan. 8 segment about the Los Angeles fires.

“Is Trump at fault?” one social media user asked.

In September 2020, Newsom appeared with Trump in the wake of another wildfire in California, saying the state had “not been fair in forest management” in the past and thanked Trump for supporting and funding a new “Category 1 commitments over the next 20 years to double our vegetation management and forest management”.

Newsom also noted that the federal government owns 57% of California’s forest lands, while the state owns 3%, and that climate change plays a significant role in wildfires. Forest researchers confirmed forestland ownership statistics.

A Jan. 8 post on Newsom’s website said California has “significantly increased state efforts to increase the resilience of wildlands and forests” and will treat more than 283,000 hectares (700,000 acres) of land to increase wildfire resistance by 2023. ability. That’s up from about 231,000 hectares (572,000 acres) in 2021, according to a national dashboard tracking fire prevention efforts.

Prescribed fires (controlled burns used to control wildfires) more than doubled from 2021 to 2023, the governor’s post said. Newsom’s press office said the state invests $200 million annually in healthy forests and fire prevention programs, and his budget commits to investing an additional $4 billion over the next few years in previous and future wildfire resilience.

Stanford Field said the factors that control fire risk and spread in California vary from place to place.

Fuel management is important in the forests of the Sierra, but less so near the Southern California coast, Field said. Homeowners and fire protection professionals can assist with fuel management, primarily by removing flammable materials and vegetation from around the home to create a buffer zone. Generally speaking, homeowners and homeowners associations will be responsible, he said.

Field said Los Angeles’ burning wastelands encompass areas owned by many different owners. The federally owned Los Angeles National Forest borders Altadena, where the Eaton Fire is burning. The Pacific Palisades Fire includes state and national park lands.

“California is fortunate to have many spectacular natural landscapes, but the state is grappling with how to manage these landscapes to control fire risk,” Field said, adding that all government agencies have recently initiated “ambitious” fire programs Risk reduction planning year.

Field said it’s important for property owners to establish buffers against wildfires, but added that he has seen no evidence “that fuel management (or lack thereof) played a role” in the Los Angeles fires.

Wildfires behave differently depending on whether they start in forest or brush, said Robert York, co-director of the Berkeley Forest Service and a professor in the Lausell School of Natural Resources.

For example, the Pacific Palisades Fire, the largest wildfire currently in the state, started as a brush fire and then spread into the area’s dense brush, a common scrubland plant community in the state. Shrubland is more likely to be overwhelmed by strong winds, limiting the effectiveness of pre-fire management, while forest-focused efforts to reduce tree density and brushwood are “known to reduce fire intensity,” York said.

He said the state and private landowners have been working to improve forest management, but more needs to be done.

PolitiFact senior reporter Amy Sherman contributed to this report.