Let’s Unpack Gov. Newsom’s New Executive Order to ‘Harden Homes Against Wildfires’

Big government authoritarianism: That’s what California Governor Gavin Newsom is to the residents in Pacific Palisades, Altadena, and other parts of Los Angeles whose homes were burned to the ground in January.

Pacific Palisades residents – some who lost their homes completely, and some whose homes are still intact  – want to know when they can get access into their homes again. That’s what Thursday’s meeting was about with President Donald Trump’s Special Envoy Ric Grenell is the White House representative on the ground in California, and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, who met with residents, FEMA, Army Corps of Engineers and LA County officials. Because so far, Mayor Karen Bass, who initially told the President in LA January 23rd that it would be weeks before residents could access their properties and homes. President Trump said that was not acceptable, so she promised Trump that residents could back into their homes within 24 hours.

That hasn’t happened.

And now, following his DC visit with President Donald Trump last week, Gov. Newsom issued a new executive order Thursday aimed at “hardening” homes located in areas with high wildfire risk by implementing extreme new regulations including not allowing most flammable things allowed within 5 feet of buildings in such areas.

What’s the expression? …that’s like putting a bandaid on a shark bite.

“The devastation in the Pacific Palisades and Altadena aren’t new lessons,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said as he signed a “suite” of new orders Thursday “hardening homes” located in areas with high wildfire risk.

What is Newsom’s bottom line? He is implementing new extreme regulations disallowing plants and trees near homes.

That is a swing and a miss by the governor.

This home burned down leaving charred trees standing.

One of the other newer problems that Globe readers have shared is that areas they have lived for decades are now being designated “wildfire risk” areas. And after that, they receive in the mail either drastic fire insurance premium increases, or fire insurance cancellations.

This is smelling like a set up.

“They are the latest lessons in urban firestorms that have devastated communities across the globe,” Newsom said.

Lessons for who? California residents already know what will prevent wildfires and help halt wildfires – forest management, deadwood removal, brush management, fire breaks, and reservoirs full of water. As California Rep. Tom McClintock says, “Excess timber comes out of the forest one way or the other: it is either carried out or it burns out.”

Does Gov. Gavin Newsom need more lessons in “urban firestorms?”

The governor isn’t supposed to occasionally play act as the leader of the state.

Living in California feels more like Lord of the Flies – a group of impulsive school boys lost on an island after a plane crash who want power but don’t understand it, and who eventually turn on each other. Ironically, the title is a literal translation of Beelzebub, a biblical demon considered the god of pride and warfare.

California has an impulsive, impetuous, preening child leading the state. We are doomed if this continues. And the MIA Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara may be even worse.

“To meet the needs of increasingly extreme weather,” Newsom said, defaulting to the black hole of climate change. If there really is “increasingly extreme weather,” why didn’t Newsom “harden” the state’s vulnerable areas ahead of the fires?

Do these burned out homes and businesses look like victims of climate change?

“…the state’s ever-evolving climate-induced challenges,” Newsom said. Remember when in 2022, while Gov. Newsom had the entire state under lockdown for a the covid flu, he announced his pompous plan for addressing “California’s hotter, drier future:”

“Hotter and drier weather conditions spurred by climate change could reduce California’s water supply by up to 10 percent by the year 2040. To replace and replenish what we will lose to thirstier soils, vegetation, and the atmosphere, Governor Gavin Newsom has announced California’s latest actions to increase water supply and adapt to more extreme weather patterns caused by climate change.”

He spoke the words but what did he do to increase water supply and adapt to more extreme weather patterns caused by climate change? …as if California politicians are going to stop hot weather. California’s longest drought on record lasted 200 years. We are supposed to prepare for hot dry years and store snowpack and rainwater from wet years.

These homes were not lost to “extreme weather patterns caused by climate change.” These homes and businesses were lost because of willful negligence by state and local government.

“Zone 0,” which will require an ember-resistant zone within 5 feet of structures located in the highest fire severity zone, Newsom said.

Ask any Pacific Palisades resident or CDF fire fighter how that would have helped.

“…adding 1.4 million new acres of land into the two higher tiers of fire severity, which will update building and local planning requirements for these communities statewide. – and increase everyone’s fire insurance.

Governor Newsom is adding regulations onto home building, as well as local requirements. Current state and local environmental regulations to prevent controlled burns are what contributed to the Pacific Palisades, Altadena and part of Los Angeles burning down, and the previous fires in recent years.

The California Globe reported in 2020 on how environmentalists zealots have destroyed California’s forests. I interviewed California Representative Tom McClintock, who represents mountain and foothill communities in and around the Sierra Nevada mountains of Northern California. McClintock has worked for years to reform the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and other barriers to responsible forest management.

“The U.S. Forest Service used to be a profitable federal agency,” McClintock said. “Up until the mid-1970s, we managed our national forests according to well-established and time-tested forest management practices. But 40 years ago, we replaced these sound management practices with what can only be described as a doctrine of benign neglect. Ponderous, byzantine laws and regulations administered by a growing cadre of ideological zealots in our land management agencies promised to save the environment. The advocates of this doctrine have dominated our law, our policies, our courts and our federal agencies ever since.”

We are now living with the result of radical environmentalism ideology – that we should abandon our public lands to overpopulation, overgrowth, and in essence, benign neglect, McClintock said. “Forest fires, fueled by decades of pent up overgrowth are now increasing in their frequency and intensity and destruction.”

So Governor Newsom’s “…combustible material within five feet of homes is window dressing at this point.

Newsom claims the state has more than doubled investments in wildfire prevention and landscape resilience efforts, providing more than $2.5 billion in wildfire resilience since 2020, with an additional $1.5 billion from the 2024 Climate Bond to be committed beginning this year for proactive projects that protect communities from wildfire and promote healthy natural landscapes.

Of note Newsom says, since 2021, the State has made strategic investments in at least 61 fuels reduction projects near the Palisades and Eaton fire perimeters through projects treated over 14,500 acres. – then why did Pacific Palisades and nearby Altadena go up in flames?

Newsom says his Administration has invested $2 billion to support CAL FIRE operations, a 47% increase since 2018, which has helped build CAL FIRE from 5,829 positions to 10,741 in that same period, and the Administration is now implementing shorter workweeks for state firefighters to prioritize firefighter well-being while adding 2,400 additional state firefighters to CAL FIRE’s ranks over the next five years. This sounds more like successful labor union negotiations.

So why are there more fires and more destruction since Newsom was elected Governor?

The answer is forest management, tinder removal, brush removal, deadwood removal – rather than telling me that I can’t have trees and bushes within 5 feet of my home.

To drive home the priorities of California’s Democrats, as California Globe reported in 2020, “With wildfires burning 1.3 million acres throughout the state, and rolling power blackouts from the weak electrical grid, the California State Senate Appropriations Committee voted to pass Assembly Bill 326 by Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi (D-Torrance) and Senator Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica), to make driving an Electric Vehicle ‘more accessible for all Californians’ through month-to-month memberships without long-term loans or leases.” Fortunately this bill died after nearly two years of hearings and floor votes.

There is a total disconnect between California Democrats and the people of the state devastated by wildfires.

For anyone still unsure about the motives of environmentalists, the list of AB 326 supporters explains a lot:

Coalition for Clean Air, California League of Conservation Voters, CalPIRG, Sierra Club, Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety (CARS), Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Plug In America, Voices for Progress, Union of Concerned Scientists, Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation, California Reinvestment Coalition, Consumer Action, Center for Biological Diversity, Rivian, Consumer Attorneys of California, CalSTART, Housing and Economic Rights Advocates (HERA), Canoo, and the City of Thousand Oaks.

Would these groups have California residents under constant wildfire threat for a few more electric cars? …Like the 80 electric vehicles the EPA has removed so far in Pacific Palisades as part of their hazardous waste cleanup?

Newsom claims that in anticipation of severe fire weather conditions in early January 2025, Cal OES approved the prepositioning of 65 fire engines, as well as more than 120 additional firefighting resources and personnel in Los Angeles, Orange, Santa Barbara, Ventura, Riverside, San Bernardino, and San Diego counties, and CAL FIRE moved firefighting resources to Southern California including 45 additional engines and six hand crews to the region.

Except the residents of Pacific Palisades said there were no fire engines moved around their area in advance of the fires. There are news reports confirming this.

California Rep. Doug LaMalfa talked to Siyamak Khorrami of the Epoch Times about California’s water status today – byzantine permits and bad policies. LaMalfa said with all of the rain and snowpack we’ve had this winter, the state needs to be pumping water out of the Delta to top off all of our reservoirs, rather than letting it flow out to the Pacific Ocean.

LaMalfa says that we are not banking water when we have the opportunity – like right now. However, he said if we pumped water out of the Delta right now, it could fill the San Luis Reservoir, which is currently only 2/3 full right now, and be available when farmers and Southern California needs it later this summer and fall.

I drove down the Sacramento River Saturday and took photos of a very full river following amazing rainstorms and healthy snowpack:

The river is halfway up the trunks of trees right now.

This is from the Freeport Bridge:

California needs less “hardening” and more common sense water policy, common sense fire prevention policy, and common sense used to cut the environmental regulations which have had a stranglehold on important, common sense and life-saving policies.

California Governor Gavin Newsom needs to re-read his executive orders and actually implement the policies he’s boasted about, rather than capitulating in labor union negotiations, which is how they read.

Do something useful Gov. Newsom. Talk to the people in Pacific Palisades (without a camera rolling), and listen to what they are saying. Listen to Reps. LaMalfa and McClintock. Ask the long time fire fighters what needs to be done, and do it without political influences.