We are devastated for our hometown of Pacific Palisades. We had the opportunity to share our founders experience with David Gelles of the The New York Times . We must continue to fight climate change and also insist that our legislators change systems to be more prepared for inevitable climate disasters. This Tuesday was a confluence of catastrophic events—an intersection of bad decisions and an increasingly hostile climate. Our dreaded Santa Ana winds, broke records with speeds over 100 mph, combined with the effects of a historically dry winter—Los Angeles hasn't seen rain since last May—created the perfect storm for this disaster. Seven months ago, Mayor Karen Bass made the controversial decision to cut $17.5 million from the Los Angeles Fire Department’s budget. On top of that, we have Governor Gavin Newsom’s much-maligned Forest Resilience Action Plan, which—while well-intentioned—has yet to offer an adequate framework for mitigating the kind of catastrophic wildfires we’re seeing today. Then, in the early hours of Wednesday morning, when the winds were still raging and fires were spreading rapidly, the water storage tanks in Pacific Palisades ran dry. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power simply couldn’t keep up with the unprecedented demand, leaving firefighters without the crucial resource they needed to combat the flames. As our council member Traci Park put it, “The chronic under-investment in the city of Los Angeles in our public infrastructure and our public safety partners was evident and on full display over the last 24 hours.” In the face of all this devastation, my work in climate change and environmental advocacy continues to occupy my mind. If a tragedy like this can decimate a place like Pacific Palisades, then no city, state, or country is truly safe. What we are experiencing is only a glimpse of the destruction that will continue to unfold as the planet bears the weight of a rapidly changing climate. This is not the future we imagined, but it is the future we’ve created. We must do better. We must take responsibility for the actions that have harmed the planet and, at the same time, hold our government accountable for the failures that have worsened our vulnerability. Preparedness is no longer optional. The priority must be clear: forest fire mitigation, proper funding for fire departments, and robust emergency infrastructure. This should be a main pillar of our public policy moving forward. #climatechange #climate #losangeles #palisadesfire
The fire that destroyed Pacific Palisades this week started a few hundred yards from the home of Sheila Morovati, an environmental activist. By Wednesday, her neighborhood was gone. https://lnkd.in/eGKBxvZZ