For all the talk about defunding the police in blue county Los Angeles, major fires revealed that what at least one blue government really ended up defunding was the fire department.

In Los Angeles, the logic appears to be maybe the fire won't happen, so let's spend cash on special interests. Or, with Mexican firefighters coming in to help douse the flames, 'who needs firefighters when you can get Mexicans to do the job for less?'

Sure, it's cynical to imagine that this is the business model, but it was quite a fast one they pulled, which as we can see now, was exceptionally tragic for Los Angeles with 9.6 million people and a $45 billion county budget, taking on two major fires in the Palisades and Altadena regions almost completely unprepared.

By now, most have heard that the city's leaders saw fit to cut the fire department budget by $17 million even as other departments expanded, drawing much bigger budget slices than the fire department as the homeless and illegal immigrant population grew.

What's less well-known is that they have been doing this for a while. According to this report, citing CNN, the Los Angeles firefighting budget is roughly the same size as it was in 1960 even though the city has roughly doubled in population and surrounding county has grown multifold.

Worse still the county is rated among the most fire-vulnerable in the nation, according to this CBS report. The kind of preparation seen in Los Angeles, though, would be the equivalent of Boston refusing to prepare for snow or Florida failing to prepare for hurricanes.

The fire department got a total budget of $1.6 billion. A look at the rest of the County's budget shows that bigger budgets went to other things -- public health, public works, health services, mental health services, children and family services, plus a host of 31 other smaller categories, which add up. You can see a list here.

So as fire was cut, other budgets crew. It was a lot worse than just that $17 million in cut funding.

The hydrants weren't repaired, the reservoirs built to keeps the hydrants pressurized after a 1961 fire weren't filled, the fire trucks fell into a state of disrepair with a large number of them out of service when the big fires hit, and firefighters were laid off for not accepting the COVID vaccine.

Worse still, many retired as wokesters were appointed to its leadership, taking with them years of experience on how to fight wildfires in Los Angeles's rugged "urban interface," the places where homes meet canyons, rocky hillsides and thick desert scrub lands, and no plan was put into place to 'rebound' them or call them back into service as advisors in emergencies, meaning, the well of organizational knowledge disappeared and firefighters were reduced to learning it all all over again.

And it's worse than other places:

A CNN analysis of the most recent data available from the 10 largest U.S. cities and other comparable departments shows the Los Angeles Fire Department is less staffed than almost any other major city, leaving it struggling to meet both daily emergencies and larger disasters such as wildfires.

Despite being located in one of the most fire-prone areas in the country, the LAFD has less than one firefighter for every 1,000 residents. That compares to cities such as Chicago, Dallas and Houston, where staffing is closer to two firefighters for the same number of residents. Of the largest cities, only San Diego has fewer firefighters per capita.

They also never prepared, as they used to do, with brush clearance in the off season, as private firefighting companies do, according to this report.

No wonder citizens turned to their garden hoses, or if they had the means, to private firefighters, which are now a thing as the city shirks its duty.

Lots of money to work with, lots of government expansion, particularly to bankroll illegals, as if they were seeking the votes and tax base, but the County of Los Angeles did it at the expense of the most basic functions of a county government, which is firefighting.

According to the County CEO, the showcase focus for firefighting wasn't on brush clearance, fire prevention measures, or firefighting prowess, it was on setting up a women's fire prep academy:

Current requirements: open to anyone 18 and over, with a GED or high school diploma and EMT credits (community college), and you can submit an application to become a firefighter for LA County. ...

They also cover power tools, ropes, heavy machinery, and a majority of things that are culturally taught to men presenting a barrier of skillset in addition to the physical strength required (able to lift a 100 lb ladder by yourself in emergency). Currently, about 85-90% of calls to County Fire are medical ones, hence why EMT is now a requirement for all firefighters. True civil servants, fire departments receive service calls for everything from sprinklers to illness to leaky pipes and will show up no matter what.

Impact of Women’s Fire League on County Fire

The first class to graduate 4 women was 16 years ago. From 2016-2021, LA County Fire hired 36/ of the 38 graduates from the program. It helped double the amount of women in the department overall. The success rate of the program is currently at 98%, which is higher than any other civilian program in existence. ...

Overcoming Barriers and Finding Strength in Unity

Current challenges exist with County vendor contracts such as having smaller sizes of uniforms available . “When I first started, I had one PPE fit that was customized for me and the other set I got were these baggy hammy downs that definitely didn’t fit. I am glad to see the progress we are making and after being on the team for more than a decade, I can see the changes,” says the safety officer

Sure, there's a role for women firefighters, sometimes women are necessary for moving into smaller spaces, but not at the expense of understaffing or rejecting stronger, more productive male firefighters, which is what they did. The site talks a lot about women as useful in answering medical calls, which are frequent, but doesn't mention fighting fires, which is kind of the point of the department.

Fire officials, even woke ones, did warn about the deficit.

In a memo from the end of last year, Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley also expressed concerns that the fire department’s staffing levels were half the size that a professional fire department should be, based on benchmarks recommended by the National Fire Protection Association.

In the memo, which the city has since removed from its website, Crowley wrote that the city’s population had grown from about 2.5 million in 1960 to nearly 4 million in 2020. Yet the city has fewer fire stations today than it did back then, even as firefighters respond to a call volume that has quadrupled.

Crowley wrote that based on an analysis, the agency would need 62 new fire stations and hundreds more firefighters to meet the nationwide average for fire departments in densely populated cities.

Sadly, their pleas fell on deaf ears, and the mayor was soon off to Ghana for a presidential inauguration as the rare red flag fire warnings went out.

What it shows is a lack of leadership in allocating resources for one of the most important functions of city government, one that isn't in the spotlight very often, but when it's needed, is indispensible, and nothing else will substitute. Out of sight, out of mind, seems to have been the mentality.  Now we see the same of Pacific Palisades and Altadena, quite literally, except that the victims have no intention of staying out of sight, out of mind, they're right there demanding answers.

Photo illustration by Monica Showalter from public domain sources