By Catalina Jaramillo, D’Angelo Gore and Robert Farley
As wildfires continued to rage in Southern California, President-elect Donald Trump took to social media with several false and misleading claims casting blame on California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, and President Joe Biden.
Trump claimed that Newsom had “refused to sign” a declaration that would have allowed water to flow from Northern California into the affected areas “to protect an essentially worthless fish.” But water policy experts told us there’s no connection between state water regulations or water flowing from the north and the ability to fight the fire.
― Trump made the inaccurate claim that there were no “firefighting planes” being used. Those aircraft were temporarily grounded the night of Jan. 7 due to very high winds, but were back in use early the next day, according to city officials.
― His claim that there was “no water in the fire hydrants” to fight fires is not the whole story. Local public works officials said that a lack of water pressure due to high water consumption made it difficult to get water to some fire hydrants in the higher regions of the Pacific Palisades.
―Trump also wrongly claimed Biden had left the Federal Emergency Management Agency with “NO MONEY” in its emergency funds to provide federal assistance. FEMA said there is about $27 billion in its Disaster Relief Fund from a recent infusion from Congress, enough to provide short-term disaster relief in California.
Wildfires spread by unusually strong winds and dry conditions have devastated the Los Angeles area, resulting in multiple deaths and thousands of structures destroyed. As the fires still raged, Trump went to Truth Social and placed blame for the fires on Newsom.
“Governor Gavin Newscum refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way,” Trump wrote on Jan. 8. “He wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt, by giving it less water (it didn’t work!), but didn’t care about the people of California. Now the ultimate price is being paid. I will demand that this incompetent governor allow beautiful, clean, fresh water to FLOW INTO CALIFORNIA! He is the blame for this. On top of it all, no water for fire hydrants, not firefighting planes. A true disaster!”
Hours later, Trump falsely attacked Biden for leaving no money in FEMA for disaster relief.
“NO WATER IN THE FIRE HYDRANTS, NO MONEY IN FEMA,” Trump wrote. “THIS IS WHAT JOE BIDEN IS LEAVING ME. THANKS JOE!”
Trump repeated some of those false claims in comments to reporters the same day. Many of those same claims were also spread by other social media users.
Trump’s comments about FEMA funding mirror some of those he made in the aftermath of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, which devastated parts of the southeast U.S. in the fall. Then, Trump falsely claimed that the Biden administration “stole” money for hurricane recovery and spent it on housing for people in the U.S. illegally. As we wrote, no funds intended for disaster relief were used to pay for programs that respond to illegal immigration.
‘Water restoration declaration’ and smelt
Trump blamed Newsom for the wildfires, claiming he had “refused to sign” a document that would have allowed water to flow from Northern California into the affected areas in Los Angeles.
But state officials have said there’s no such declaration, and water policy experts told us there’s no connection between water flowing from the north of the state and the ability to fight the fire.
“The availability of water for fighting the fires … had nothing to do with water supply from Northern California,” Peter Gleick, a hydroclimatologist and co-founder of the Pacific Institute, a California nonpartisan research and policy group, told us in a phone interview. “There’s plenty of water in Southern California. In fact, the reservoirs in Southern California are more full now than they normally are for this time of year. And the problem has been that no urban water system is capable of providing enough water for massive urban wildfires, and that’s what led some of the hydrants to go dry in Southern California.”
Letitia Grenier, director of the Public Policy Institute of California’s Water Policy Center, agreed.
“The transfer of water from Northern California to Southern California is not related to water availability to fight the fires in the Los Angeles area,” she told us in a phone interview. “Currently, reservoirs in the Los Angeles area are mostly full. There is local water available to fight fires, but there are logistical challenges.”
Grenier told us it’s not clear what Trump is referring to when he mentioned a “water restoration declaration.” Newsom’s press office posted that “there is no such document.”
A Trump-Vance transition spokesperson referred to a lawsuit by California over a Trump February 2020 memorandum to deliver more water to the Central Valley in California. This was part of a plan to divert large amounts of water from the San Francisco Bay Delta in Northern California to the Central Valley to irrigate farms. The state filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, claiming the plan failed to protect endangered fish species including the delta smelt and the Chinook salmon.
Greiner said that although water is always diverted to the Central Valley and Southern California, it’s just a question of how much to divert while still leaving water in the river for the fish and other environmental issues. That memorandum “didn’t comply with the laws of California and that’s why California sued,” Grenier told us.
In his Jan. 8 post, Trump claimed that Newsom didn’t sign the “water restoration declaration” to “protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt … but didn’t care about the people of California.”
That same day, Trump told reporters that fire hydrants in Los Angeles didn’t have water because the water was sent to the Pacific Ocean to protect smelt, typically a two- to three-inch fish that only lives in the San Francisco Estuary.
“They send it out to the Pacific because they’re trying to protect a tiny little fish, which is in other areas, by the way, called the smelt. And for the sake of a smelt, they have no water,” he said.
As we explained in 2016 when Trump said California was “shoving [water] out to the sea” to protect a “three-inch fish,” California officials release fresh water from reservoirs partly to protect endangered species but mostly to prevent the contamination of water supplies with salt water.
These water regulations don’t have anything to do with fire hydrants in the Pacific Palisades going dry, Grenier and Gleick told us. Most of the water that Los Angeles gets doesn’t come from the area where the delta smelt lives, but from the Colorado River, the Owens Valley and from local groundwater resources, Gleick said.
“There are many different water policies in California that determine how much water is sent from one part of the state to another and when it’s sent,” he said. “There have been some efforts in recent years to restore some water to threatened and endangered species … but none of those policies have reduced the amount of water delivered to cities in Southern California. They affect sometimes the amount of water delivered to farmers in the Central Valley, but again, there’s no connection with that and the water that’s available for fighting the fires. They’re simply separate issues,” Gleick said.
Firefighting planes and fire hydrants
Trump’s claim on Truth Social that there were “not firefighting planes” is inaccurate.
Aircraft used to drop water or flame retardant on the fires were only temporarily grounded the night of Jan. 7, according to the Los Angeles Times, which cited statements made by city and fire officials.
“Extreme winds Tuesday night forced crews to temporarily halt efforts to battle the Palisades and Eaton fires by air, authorities said,” the L.A. Times reported.
In a press conference earlier that day, Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone explained how increased wind speeds make aerial firefighting “more dangerous” and largely ineffective.
Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, posted on social media that the firefighting planes were back in operation the next day on Jan. 8.
As for there being “no water in the fire hydrants,” as Trump wrote in another post, that’s only part of the story.
Firefighters in the Pacific Palisades did have problems getting water from the local fire hydrant system for several reasons, including low water pressure caused by the unusually high water demand, according to city officials.
In a Jan. 8 press conference, Janisse Quiñones, chief executive and chief engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said that three nearly 1-million-gallon water tanks that are used to maintain water pressure for the local water system all ran empty by 3:00 a.m. local time on Jan. 8. And because “so much water was being used” elsewhere before those tanks could be refilled, she said, there wasn’t enough water pressure to get the water that was in the system’s trunk line “up the hill” to some of the fire hydrants.
“Fighting a wildfire with urban water systems … is really challenging,” said Quiñones. She echoed Mark Pestrella, director of Los Angeles County Public Works, who said at the same press event that having “multiple fire hydrants drawing water” from the municipal water system “for several hours is unsustainable” because the system was not designed to fight a wildfire.
Statements about the fire hydrants being dry were also prevalent on social media, with some posts blaming local Democrats, including Newsom.
FEMA funding
Trump also wrongly claimed that there was “NO MONEY IN FEMA” to assist with the California wildfires, blaming Biden.
In fact, in December, Congress approved a continuing resolution with $110 billion in disaster assistance, including $29 billion to replenish FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund. The bill was passed on a bipartisan basis, 366-34 in the House, and 85-11 in the Senate, and was signed by Biden into law. Biden had asked for $40 billion for the Disaster Relief Fund.
“Thanks to Congress’s recent passage of a disaster supplemental, FEMA has the funding and resources to respond to the needs of California and other active disasters FEMA continues to support,” a FEMA spokesperson told us via email. “The current balance of the Disaster Relief Fund is approximately $27 billion.”
Craig Fugate, FEMA administrator during President Barack Obama’s administration, told us via email that the funding bill approved by Congress in December “has sufficient funding to support short-term response and recovery operations for the Los Angeles wildfires and recent disasters.”
“However,” Fugate added, “additional funding will be required to address long-term rebuilding efforts. The total cost of the Los Angeles wildfires is not yet known. Long-term recovery funding requirements will involve additional funding for FEMA, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the Small Business Administration (SBA), and other federal programs.”
A Trump-Vance transition spokesperson told us, “The approved FEMA funding was for communities that were long overdue disaster assistance, such as those in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida impacted by Hurricanes Helene and Milton.” While the authors of the bill, which extended government funding through March 14, noted that the funds would help victims of those hurricanes, the money also would apply to “response, recovery, and mitigation activities” related to any presidentially declared major disaster. Indeed, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole, the Republican who introduced the bill, noted in a floor speech that it would help the victims of tornadoes in his home district in Oklahoma.
On Jan. 9, Biden announced the federal government would be paying for 100 percent of all fire response costs related to the California wildfires for the first 180 days.
“This is going to pay for things like debris and hazardous material removal, temporary shelters, first responders’ salaries and all of the necessary measures to protect life and property,” Biden said. “I told the governor and local officials, spare no expense to do what they need to do to contain these fires and in their communities that have really been devastated.”
“Since the fire started,” Biden said, “FEMA has been working with the state to help residents get shelter, groceries, prescriptions and other critical goods like baby formula.”
But he acknowledged that the cost of disaster relief — although currently unknown — will be enormous and that Congress will need to pass more funding in the future to cover its cost.
“I’m going to make an appeal right now to the United States Congress,” Biden said. “They’re going to have to step up when we ask for more help, more help to get these people the kind of shelter they need, to get the kind of help they need. Because it really does matter.”