CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JUNE 13, 2025 OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“PROMISES, PROMISES: FEDS FAILING VICTIMS OF WINTER FIRESTORMS”
So
far, the federal government is in large part failing the victims of the
firestorms that swept through the Pacific Palisades and Altadena areas of Los
Angeles County last January.
Things
are not the way President Trump said things would be. “We’re going to have you
go very quickly,” he promised the fire victims at a press conference staged
with Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass while the ashes of the
Palisades fire still smoked nearby.
That’s
in part because Trump and other Republicans have linked any substantial aid
package to political preconditions, an unprecedented attempt to leverage a
major disaster against ideological opponents. Among those goals, thus far
resisted by state officials, are changes in water management policies to
disregard most endangered species and adopting voter ID laws, a longtime
Republican goal.
So
much for the American tradition of non-partisan disaster relief.
There’s
also Trump’s concerted attempt to downsize and virtually eliminate FEMA, the
Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has taken charge of disaster
aftermath measures in virtually all wildfire or hurricane disasters of the last
several decades.
Trump
wants to farm out FEMA’s work to the states and provide far less disaster
relief funding than in previous episodes.
That’s
not the spoken reason FEMA refuses to perform analyses of toxic substances in
the topsoil remaining on burned-out lots in both the Palisades and Eaton fire
footprints, saying only that the scraping of top layers of each lot by the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers gives sufficient protection from toxics. Recent soil
testing by Los Angeles County officials found elevated lead and arsenic levels
at destroyed homes already cleared by Army crews in Altadena, but FEMA
officials maintain removing wildfire debris and up to six inches of topsoil is
good enough to eliminate immediate public health risks.
But
what about burned-out homeowners, virtually none of whom is getting
toxics-testing funding as part of their homeowner insurance settlements? They
have little or no money for testing, one reason only about 200 rebuilding
permits had been taken out in the Palisades fire area as of late May.
The
most common suggestion among researchers and fire victims is for the state to
step in where FEMA refuses. But Newsom faces a $12 billion state budget
deficit. Every dollar spent on toxics testing for homeowners could be a dollar
taken from everything from public schools to state parks to sewer and highway
maintenance. So state aid is not likely, especially since the Palisades fire
area was previously among the state’s wealthiest enclaves, with an abundance of
$3 million-plus home valuations.
And
yet, who’s going to pull a building permit and stand by while framing of their
future home rises from the ashes if they have reason to believe those ashes
might somehow poison them?
Andrew
Whelton, a Purdue University professor and researcher on post-wildfire
contamination, told a reporter that comprehensive soil testing is critical for
the affected areas’ future health and safety.
Newsom
at one point asked FEMA to perform detailed tests, but said his request was
nixed less than a day after it was posed.
It’s
been similar for him on Capitol Hill forays to seek $40 billion in general
disaster relief for the winter fires. So far, not a penny has cleared the
Republican-led Congress.
Los
Angeles County, meanwhile, did step up in unincorporated Altadena, providing $3
million for soil testing for homeowners downwind of the Eaton fire. But Whelton
said that effort – with homeowners submitting one sample to a commercial lab and
then having to interpret data on their own – will not provide reliable risk
analysis even for people wanting to return to homes that did not burn.
Even
that effort has not been matched by the city of Los Angeles, of which Pacific
Palisades is part. The city now is battling a billion-dollar-plus budget
deficit of its own.
It
adds up to colossal disappointment for all but the wealthiest, who can fund
their own testing and analysis, and suggests recovery from the winter fires
might not only be far slower than Trump promised, but also slower than after
previous major California wildfires, with even worse performances likely after
fires yet to come.
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Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book,
"The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the
Government’s Campaign to Squelch It" is now available in a soft cover
fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net