Title: Trump’s Claims About California’s Water Management Deemed False by Experts
As the state of California struggled to contain a series of devastating wildfires, former President Donald Trump took to social media to blame the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, for the fires. Trump falsely claimed that Newsom had chosen to protect an “essentially worthless fish” called the smelt, which is only found in Northern California, over the needs of Southern California residents.
However, experts have disputed Trump’s claims, stating that the state has been actively working to prevent wildfires through a variety of measures, including thinning out overgrown forests and treating vegetation with prescribed burns. In 2023 alone, over 1,500 square miles of state and federal land in California was treated in this way.
Despite these efforts, the fires in Los Angeles County were still able to spread rapidly due to extreme winds, which reached speeds of 100 mph. The winds made it impossible for even fully functioning hydrants to successfully battle the blazes.
Experts have also disputed Trump’s claims about the state’s water management. Trump claimed that Newsom had refused to sign a water restoration declaration, preventing millions of gallons of water from flowing from Northern to Southern California. However, experts have stated that there is no connection between water battles in Northern California and hydrants running dry during the LA fires.
In reality, the Los Angeles metro gets its water from two major sources: the state water project stemming from Lake Oroville and the Colorado River. Both sources are currently stable, and the initial lack of firefighting planes in the air due to dangerous winds meant that municipal water was the primary source firefighters had during the worst of the wildfires.
Experts have called for an independent investigation into the dry hydrants and the fact that a small reservoir was offline during the blazes. While working hydrants and extra reservoir capacity could have helped contain some of the damage, multiple experts have stated that the fire was simply too powerful for the tools firefighters had.