As Los Angeles residents grapple with losing their homes and firefighters struggle to contain the fires that broke out on January 7, right-wing media figures are set on pinning the blame on the state’s Democratic leaders and environmentalists, misleadingly claiming they’ve mismanaged the state’s forests, failing to implement preventive measures meant to mitigate wildfires. 

But at a time when wildfire season now appears to be year-round, right-wing media are ignoring the larger implications of the fires and the aggressive steps that cities in the West will realistically need to take to live with these blazes while protecting residents. While techniques such as thinning out small trees, shrubs, and other dry fuel, as well as prescribed burning, can help reduce the risk of large fires, unpredictable cycles of extreme flooding, heat, and drought are creating roadblocks. Improving emergency and resource management and climate-proofing homes and infrastructure must be part of the solution as well. 

• The two largest fires, Palisades and Eaton, have collectively burned over 33,000 acres of Los Angeles County. Nearly 180,000 people have been forced to evacuate, at least ten people have died, and over 9,000 structures have been damaged or destroyed. The Palisades fire was 8% contained and the Eaton fire was at 3% containment as of publication. [Los Angeles Times, 1/9/25; Cal Fire, accessed 1/9/25; NBC, 1/10/25]
   
• The dry and intense Santa Ana winds that occur in the colder months are fueling the fires. Before the fires broke out on January 7, there had been concerns that dry and windy conditions would lead to disaster. On January 5, Washington Post reporter Diana Leonard wrote: “Drought is back in Southern California — a region that has not seen significant rain for nearly nine months — and the remarkable dryness has made the landscape vulnerable to winter wildfires. Santa Ana winds could bring a serious fire weather threat this week.” [The New York Times, 1/7/25; The Washington Post, 1/5/25]
   
• Wildfires are unusual in Southern California in January, suggesting that they are becoming more frequent and harder to predict. Meteorologist and climate journalist Eric Holthaus noted that the fires are “exceedingly rare for southern California at any time of the year, let alone January, in what is typically the middle of the rainy season – weeks later (or earlier) in the calendar year than other historical major wildfires have occurred,” adding: “These fires are a watershed moment, not just for residents of LA, but emblematic of a new era of complex, compound climate disaster.” [The Guardian, 1/9/25]

• Southern California saw record-breaking heat over the summer, followed by below-average rain, helping create a “disaster recipe” for fire conditions. Anthony Edwards, a meteorologist at the San Francisco Chronicle, wrote on social media, “Locally record hot summer followed by a near-record dry fall followed by the strongest wind event in 14 years. Energized powerlines strung across a landscape that is home to tens of millions of people. Disaster recipe.” The National Weather Service had warned the windstorm was likely to be the “most destructive” in over a decade and issued a warning for a “critical fire weather area” for Friday. [Bluesky, 1/8/24; CBS, 1/8/24; NOAA, 1/10/25]
   
• Forest management techniques like thinning are not foolproof, and some experts disagree on their efficacy. A 2021 Oregon State University study found that forest thinning in tandem with prescribed burning can “moderate fire behavior,” but some ecologists and studies suggest that mechanical forest thinning, or getting rid of smaller trees and shrubs to reduce fire fuel, is not always effective. For example, during an appearance on CNN Newsroom Live, Chad Hanson, a forest and fire ecologist and the president of the John Muir Project, noted that wildfires have also affected areas near forests that have been logged and thinned out already, saying it’s necessary to focus on “helping communities become fire-safe.” He also told the Los Angeles Times, “The fact is that forest management is not stopping weather- and climate-driven fires.” [Los Angeles Times, 8/21/21; CNN, CNN Newsroom Live, 1/8/25; Oregon State University, 9/26/21]
   
• Forest management is getting more difficult in a hotter, drier climate. In 2023, wildfire researchers found that climate change is making it more difficult for firefighters to carry out prescribed burns, a technique for mitigating wildfire that involves starting small controlled fires to prevent larger ones in the future. As reported by KQED, the research found that the number of “safe burn days,” when the wind, temperature, and humidity are appropriate for prescribed burns, “is expected to drop by 17% by the year 2060” across the West.  [Communications Earth & Environment, 10/3/23; KQED, 10/10/23]
   
• Even while prescribed burning is being held up by unpredictable weather, safety concerns, and long approval processes, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) has nevertheless been increasing the number of acres burned. According to The New York Times, Cal Fire “burned about 36,000 acres during the 2022-23 fiscal year” and its goal is to burn 50,000 annually going forward. In total, in 2023, 700,000 acres were treated to help protect against wildfires, with thinning, tree cutting, grazing, or some combination of these and other forestry tactics. But the amount of land that experts say would benefit from prescribed burns is massive, in part because the state was focused on fire suppression instead of fire prevention for many years. Firefighters have been stretched thin, and some say the state’s “byzantine environmental approval process, required under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA),” is slowing down controlled burns. [The New York Times, 9/7/24, Cap Radio, 4/12/22; San Francisco Chronicle, 10/10/24]

• Newsmax host Rob Finnerty spoke with right-wing Hoover Institute fellow Victor Davis Hanson, who falsely claimed that there has been “no forest management” and the California leaders “don’t believe in cleaning the forest or they don’t believe in calculated and measured timber industry to clean it up.” [Newsmax, Finnerty, 1/9/25]
   
• Frequent Fox News contributor and Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway praised Trump for “talking about this fire management issue that leads to fires in California — or it leads to out-of-control fires — since at least 2017.” She added, “He’s made this a big emphasis in his first administration and now he’s doing it again,” and complained that Californians are “not getting a lot for their tax dollars. They’re not getting the brush cleared.” [Fox News, America Reports, 1/9/25]
   
• Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones claimed that the brush has “not been trimmed in decades.” He added: “It just looks like a wood pile. I mean, it's just brush piles of wood everywhere. Decades of dead grass. Just — it's a frickin' tender box. Then they don't trim the trees and brush back from the power lines. And I saw footage.” [Infowars, The Alex Jones Show, 1/8/25]
   
• Fox host Sean Hannity and Leo Terell, whom Trump recently tapped for senior counsel for the Justice Department, claimed that California has completely neglected fire prevention. “It seems like there has been zero forest management by the government at all. Zero. None whatsoever,” said Hannity. Terell later said, “It’s not a priority to the far left. … They focus on denying their responsibility by yelling out climate change. … It’s a lie! It's poor management on the part of the Democrats. They do not look at fire prevention.” [Fox News, Hannity, 1/8/25; Politico, 1/9/25]
   
• Disgraced former Republican lawmaker and OAN host Matt Gaetz blamed the fire on “liberals” for supposedly working “against sensible management of California's forests that would reduce the severity of routine regular wildfires.” Gaetz insisted that fires have gotten worse because “liberals have essentially thrown a match into a room with gasoline and then wondered why everything is on fire.”  [One America News, The Matt Gaetz Show, 1/8/25]
   
• Fox host Laura Ingraham highlighted Trump’s misleading comments about the cause of the fire, blaming it on “bad forest management” and “incompetence.” “Well, of course, we know where California liberals choose to spend billions, and we do know that their environmental fanaticism has shoved common sense thinking out the door. Now, while the winds are horrific, experts insist that bad forest management can make a bad situation worse. And Trump called this out six years ago. … He’s right. Incompetence kills.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 1/8/25]
   
• On his radio show, Hannity said, “It's pretty unbelievable that if you listen to the experts, a lot of what is happening with this wildfire in California could have been prevented.” He continued: “There's been decades of overgrowth in California forests. You know, if you look at the liability laws around controlled burns, they don't allow controlled burns. You can't remove brush.” [Premiere Radio Networks, The Sean Hannity Show, 1/8/25]
   
• Rick Caruso, a developer who ran for mayor of Los Angeles against current Mayor Karen Bass, said on Fox News’ America Reports that “the brush maintenance was a massive failure, has been for years.” “I would have made sure we would have had the brush removed in these neighborhoods that have been overgrown for decades,” he later said. [Fox News, America Reports, 1/8/25]
   
• Conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich wrote, “California does almost no wild brush clearing and let druggies camp out and start fires.” He continued: “Then when a big fire like in Pacific Palisades (shitlib central) happens, the narrative is climate change. It’s time to vote Republican!” [Twitter/X, 1/7/25]
   
• Right-wing YouTuber Benny Johnson blamed the fires on “environmentalists” that  “don’t clear brush.” Johnson said, “Not to say that these people deserve it necessarily, but I am trying to say that they don’t clear brush because these environmentalists are such morons. They don’t like actually clear out the dead trees and limbs and sticks and stuff. … Oftentimes, the environmentalist policies are terrible for the environment.” He also called California a “single-party state controlled by environmentalist sociopaths.” [YouTube, 1/7/25]
   
• Bonchie, a writer for right-wing site Red State, posted, “Democrats would rather watch California burn so they can blame ‘climate change’ for political reasons than just clean up brush and create more reservoirs. That's pretty gross when you think about it.” [Twitter/X, 1/8/25]

• Back in 2018, Trump blamed the Camp Fire that destroyed the town of Paradise on California’s forestry policies. Trump wrote on X (then Twitter), “There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor. Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!”  [NPR, 11/17/18; The New York Times, 11/12/18]
   
• On their respective radio programs, Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham said “Trump was right” to blame California wildfires on poor forest management. [Media Matters, 11/19/18, 11/19/18]
   
• Trump said the same thing in 2020 when wildfires burned over 10.2 million acres in California, Washington, and Oregon. At a campaign event, he said, “When trees fall down after a short period of time, they become very dry – really like a matchstick ... and they can explode.” [USA Today, 9/14/20; The Washington Post, 6/10/23]
   
• Fox again parroted these claims, with Fox contributor Jason Chaffetz calling Trump “absolutely right” and blaming the wildfires primarily on a lack of clearing brush, saying, “Democrats have been the biggest impediment in doing so.” [Fox News, Outnumbered Overtime, 9/14/20]
   
• The Five co-host Greg Gutfeld stated that forest management is “the problem in California. It's not climate change. It’s forest management.” [Fox News, The Five, 9/14/20]