“What I Saw / Didn’t See When Firefighters From Elsewhere Came To Fight The Great LA Inferno” by Daniel Guss
HINT: There was a whole lot of something and a whole lot of something missing.
When MFJ, my nickname for My Friend Jen, sent me this clip of fire erupting in the Sepulveda Basin last week, I went by and saw something phenomenal.
I saw fire trucks from nearby cities like Culver City and Monterey Park positioned strategically because our inept and corrupt state, county and municipal politicians left enormous swaths of Southern California preventably vulnerable to a deadly fire massacre.
These firefighters were soon joined by others arriving from much further distances (to save Los Angeles from its politicians), almost all of whom were endorsed, or repeatedly endorsed, by the Los Angeles Times.
They came from places like Kings County…
Places like Hemet…
And Alameda.
They came from Chula Vista.
And don’t forget San Luis Obispo.
Or Marin.
Some of the trucks identify as coming from the California Office of Emergency Services…
Others identify as the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.
Many more came from Cal Fire, like this crew from Butte County, which is a 500 mile drive.
Some drove massive, military-like fire equipment needed for enormous challenges like The Great Los Angeles Inferno.
Before I get to what I did not see, many more firefighters arrived from places that I had to Google to find on a map.
Keep the standing ovation going for the unsung heroes from places like Poway.
And Grass Valley.
And Central Kitsap, as opposed to other parts of Kitsap County, in Washington State, more than 1,200 miles away.
Its entire population is less than 3% of LA County’s.
The biggest city in Kitsap County is Bremerton, where the population is just 45,000. They had mercy on Los Angeles, sending us some of their heroes.
How did Los Angeles get into such a jam of ineptitude that it has to draw help from the City of La Center and the Cowlitz Indian Tribe, where their combined populations are roughly 8,000???
Which is not to be conflated with Clark-Cowlitz, which also sent some heroes to this one Valley location.
Do you want to guess what it is that I did not see while photographing the firefighting rigs from so far away?
I had several good chats with the arriving firefighters as they checked into a now-packed hotel.
Mull it over, while I mention those from the combined communities Hockinson, Brush Prairie, Heisson, Venersborg, Rawson Road and the City of Battle Ground, which are located in Clark County, Washington.
As opposed to the help that actually came from Clark County.
And Bainbridge Island.
And Wenatchee Valley.
And the proud firefighters from Hansville, Indianola, Kingston, Miller Bay and Suquamish.
They came from places named Chelan.
And Clovis.
And Garden Valley.
And Milpitas.
And Poulsbo, another fire department from Kitsap.
Neighbors helping neighbors, indeed.
Apologies and thanks to the arriving heroes not mentioned here, but who may have been directed to other areas of our deadly, destructive political failure and chaos.
So what did I notice as I chatted with the arriving firefighters after their exhausting, long drives to save Los Angeles from itself?
All of them were men.
Unless they hid all of the female firefighters, if they have any, they all sent male firefighters only.
Do you see any Los Angeles officials complaining about firefighting “equity” now?
So why are these much smaller places helping LA with its blazes?
Key LAFD insiders tell me that the agency is known to falsify trainee injuries when some of them fail their final test before hiring decisions are made, in order to keep those with desirable demographics in the trainee pool.
This gives some of those trainees an unwarranted, unfair second or third grab at the brass ring for a lucrative LAFD career and an early, comfortable retirement without a meritorious hiring.
Call it what you want.
It should surprise nobody that this may coincide with the LAFD rigging its response times to emergency calls.
By “rigging,” I mean lying.
There are undoubtedly capable female firefighters at the LAFD who earned the gig based solely on merit, skill, strength and athleticism.
Except the demographics at the top of the LAFD in particular and perhaps in its ranks, as I have previously reported, are wildly inconsistent with the population at-large.
My point?
The Great LA Inferno was made worse by DEI initiatives — and other forms of corruption — at the expense of public safety.
Local governments, especially the City of Los Angeles, and its LAFD (and LAPD), are so saturated with corruption, rigged systems like these may help explain why Los Angeles today stands fried to a crisp, reliant on firefighters from far, far away.
Let the powerful deny this under penalty of perjury.
With a little luck, perhaps they will be asked under oath.
(Daniel Guss, MBA, won the LA Press Club’s “Online Journalist of the Year” and “Best Activism Journalism” awards in June ‘23. In June ‘24, he won its “Best Commentary, Non-Political” award. He has contributed to the Daily Mail, CityWatchLA, KFI AM-640, iHeartMedia, 790-KABC, Cumulus Media, KCRW 89.9 FM, KRLA 870 AM, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal, Pasadena Star-News, Los Angeles Downtown News and the Los Angeles Times in its sports, opinion, entertainment and Sunday Magazine sections among other publishers.)