Originally published at: http://sg.lsepcn.com/archives/531
"Natural Disaster" or Human Error? — The Truth Behind California Wildfires
Editorial Board of League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Proletariat
Aerial comparison before and after the Los Angeles wildfire
The wildfire broke out in California on January 7, 2025, and the ongoing blaze affected Los Angeles metropolitan area and surrounding regions. This wildfire is a disaster for the American people, severely endangering the safety of the population. According to the American "Accurate Weather Forecast" company, the economic loss caused by the wildfire in the Los Angeles area in early January is estimated to be between $250 billion and $275 billion.[1] American bourgeois media unanimously claim that this wildfire will be the most devastating "natural disaster" in U.S. history.
The reason why California's wildfires are called "the most devastating fires in U.S. history" is not only because of their large scale but also because they directly broke out in Los Angeles, home to Hollywood, famous for producing bourgeois films. The fire destroyed many homes in local residential areas, many of which belonged to bourgeois celebrities, business owners, and bankers' mansions. As of January 25, the fire had destroyed about 16,000 houses, with estimated total economic losses reaching $250 billion. However, the losses suffered by the bourgeoisie are vastly different from those of the working people. According to the U.S. real estate company Zillow, the average house price in the affected area is $3.4 million, and luxury homes in neighborhoods like "Pacific Palisades" and "Malibu" were almost completely burned down. Yet, these losses do not substantially impact the bourgeoisie, who often have insurance for their mansions and are now hiding in other luxury homes, waiting for substantial compensation to be deposited into their accounts. Some shameless individuals, such as Chinese bourgeois celebrity and notorious playboy Edison Chen, even profited from the disaster, openly posting online fundraising campaigns to rebuild a kindergarten for his daughter, revealing a hypocritical and predatory attitude.
Trump and Karen Bass at a Los Angeles roundtable
Contrary to the bourgeois complacency, local residents not only lost their homes but also received no proper compensation. According to reports from "Newsweek" and other media on January 8, due to increased frequency and severity of wildfires in California, the insurance company State Farm canceled fire insurance policies for 72,000 households, including hundreds from the heavily affected Pacific Palisades area in Los Angeles.[2]
Even U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris had to admit: "Sadly, many insurance companies have canceled coverage for families already affected or about to be affected." The working people face threats of unemployment and job losses, and damage to public utilities like water and electricity has created survival difficulties. After the wildfire, over 100,000 residents received evacuation orders from Los Angeles authorities, but many had to evacuate before the orders were issued, becoming homeless. The weather changes caused by the wildfire could lead to heavy rains in the Los Angeles area, which would likely trigger new floods on the burned land, causing even greater damage. Despite this, both the Democratic and Republican bourgeois parties have reached a startling consensus on trampling on people's rights. During President Trump's inspection of the wildfire zone in Los Angeles, he accused the Democratic government of Los Angeles of charging up to $25,000 for debris removal services, taking over half a year to complete. His so-called "solution" was to have residents clean up the debris themselves! For the working people, this is akin to choosing between two piles of manure. In this natural and man-made disaster, the greatest victims are not the bourgeoisie who spend millions of dollars, but the workers who lost everything in the fire and are forced to become refugees.
According to the latest report released by the U.S. Department of Labor on Thursday (January 23), the number of unemployment benefit applications nationwide surged as of the week ending January 18, mainly due to the rapid increase in applications in California following the community destruction caused by the Los Angeles wildfire.
Data shows that from the 11th to the 18th, about 61,000 people in California applied for unemployment benefits, an increase of about 6,700 from the previous week. This is the highest figure in two years and about 50% higher than the average weekly number from 2023 to 2024, unadjusted.
In the first week after the fire (January 4-11), the number of first-time unemployment claims in California surged by over 12,700, with the largest increases in agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting sectors.
Across the U.S., in the week ending January 18, the seasonally adjusted initial unemployment claims reached 22,300, the highest in the past six weeks, an increase of about 6,000 from the previous week.
The direct cause of this large-scale wildfire outbreak is increasingly extreme climate conditions, including drought, strong winds, and dryness caused by these factors. California, located on the U.S. West Coast, receives less than 500 millimeters of annual rainfall, making it a semi-arid region. In recent years, winter precipitation has been persistently low. In the first eight months of this fire season, California experienced its hottest summer on record, with many northern areas exceeding 43.3°C. Prior to this, two consecutive years of record-breaking heavy rainfall generated abundant vegetation, which became fuel for fires after drought. Regarding wind, the seasonal "Santa Ana" winds blow through narrow mountain canyons from October to January each year, and the eastern Nevada mountains block warm, moist air, turning the Santa Ana winds into hot, dry "Foehn" winds, creating the local "fire season." According to NASA records, this year's Santa Ana winds reached speeds over 100 mph (about 160 km/h), more hazardous than in previous years. As for drought, historically, Los Angeles receives winter rains in November that can hinder large-scale wildfires caused by Santa Ana winds. However, since October 2024, rainfall has been only about 4% of normal levels[3], and despite the strong Santa Ana winds, there has been no rain, leaving California in a state prone to fires until January this year.
Although wildfires are natural disasters, they are not purely natural phenomena. Their increasing frequency and intensity reflect the worsening damage to the environment caused by the development of capitalist society. The bourgeoisie has cut down lush colonial forests, exhausted and polluted domestic water resources, and replaced healthy vegetation with easily combustible, water-consuming monoculture crops. The environmental destruction by the bourgeoisie has triggered global warming and extreme weather events, making every year "the hottest in history." The outbreak, spread, and out-of-control nature of wildfires are not caused by nature but by the reactionary capitalist system.
Water shortage at fire hydrants
After the wildfires, severe water shortages at fire hydrants were exposed across Los Angeles and California. The water supply system in the heavily affected Pacific Palisades community (an affluent residential area) collapsed, and nearby San Inés Reservoir had not been replenished for nearly a year due to maintenance, resulting in fire hydrants running dry and firefighters powerless. As previously mentioned, with extreme weather, large-scale wildfires in California are entirely foreseeable. Yet, despite advanced weather forecasting technology, California's bourgeoisie seemed unprepared for the fires. Reports indicate that the Los Angeles Fire Department has been underfunded for at least ten years, with annual firefighting budgets decreasing each year. Although the National Weather Service issued fire warnings, local fire departments did not deploy firefighting measures. Confronted with water shortages, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) stated that due to water pressure issues and system design flaws, many fire hydrants in Los Angeles were running dry. The department is working to deliver water resources to the fire hydrants at the end of the system. In the face of disaster, various bureaucratic agencies in the U.S. are passing the buck, and California's wildfires have further spiraled out of control due to mutual blame.
Despite bourgeois accusations that the fire was a "human error," they claim that with enough water and firefighting facilities, the wildfires could be extinguished. But can such a fire be simply attributed to water shortages and inaction by firefighting departments? What are the real reasons behind these issues? Only by dismissing the bourgeois excuses can we continue to seek the truth.
Water usage in various U.S. states
California is the state with the most severe groundwater depletion in the U.S., ranking first among the five major groundwater subsidence zones. During this process, capitalists living in luxury homes in California made the main "contribution." For example, the Kardashian family set up a large marble washbasin in their private villa, which they use almost continuously for aesthetic purposes, resulting in a monthly water consumption of up to 870 tons.
Additionally, California, as a major agricultural state, inevitably requires large amounts of water for irrigation. According to data from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, in the 2021-2022 fiscal year, California supplied about 163 billion gallons of water, with 150 billion gallons owned by a local agricultural capitalist, the Resnik family.[4]
The Resnik family owns the largest food conglomerate in the U.S., The Wonderful Company, mainly producing pistachios. They own over 185,000 acres of farmland in California, mainly for water-intensive crops like almonds, citrus, pistachios, and guavas. Despite California's severe water shortage, to maintain their high profits, the Resnik family continues to use large amounts of water for irrigation. This environmentally destructive behavior exacerbates local water scarcity. From 2017 to 2021, their almond planting area increased by 32%, pistachios by 63%, and their water use increased by 53.2 billion gallons—enough for four million households for a year[5]. These bourgeois "environmental protection" claims, which criticize others publicly, often occur behind the scenes with collusion between the Resnik family and local governments.
California's water resources are managed under a so-called "mixed" ownership system. On the surface, due to water scarcity, the California government has set "primary" and "secondary" water rights, but the granting standards depend on capital strength. Private monopolists like the Resnik family can ignore these rights and profit from them. They own large landholdings with abundant water sources and long-term water supply contracts, including agreements made before California joined the U.S. and during the Mexican era. These contracts allow them to use canal water at very low prices for agricultural purposes. To monopolize water rights, the Resnik family and other local agricultural capitalists even targeted the state's largest reservoir, Castaic Lake. In 1994, they sued the California government over water rights. The two bourgeois factions reached a settlement, allowing farmers to draw water directly from Castaic Lake for irrigation. Today, the Resnik family controls 57% of the reservoir's shares. They have profited immensely by extracting large amounts of water at low cost and reselling it at monopolistic prices to Californians, with profit margins up to 600-700%. As a regular on Forbes' rich list, the Resnik family's net worth has reached $13 billion. However, their wealth has come at the cost of California's groundwater depletion, with the San Ysidro Valley's groundwater level dropping nearly 5 feet (about 1.524 meters) annually[6].
The Democratic Party in the U.S. has always used "environmental protection" as a campaign slogan, but in the face of blood-stained political donations from the Resnik family, these empty words of deceiving the people are cast aside. All four governors of California have accepted campaign contributions from the Resnik family. Their collusion with business has suppressed the protests and complaints of the Californian people. While the bourgeoisie makes huge profits and politicians rise rapidly, the lives of ordinary Californians are miserable.
And while the people of California are exhausted from the seemingly endless wildfires, the bourgeoisie of both the Republican and Democratic parties in the United States are busy attacking each other. The new president, Republican Trump, on January 12th, criticized California Governor Newsom: "Incompetent politicians have no idea how to put out fires... they just can't extinguish fires, what's wrong with them?" The Democrats counterattack by accusing the Republicans of politicizing the disaster and claim that "people are fleeing for their lives, but this person (Trump) wants to politicize (the wildfires)." The Republicans also use the expansion of fire rescue funds as leverage, demanding an increase in the federal debt ceiling so that the Republican-led government can expand the fiscal deficit, under the guise of "disaster relief," to squeeze the laboring people. This method of using natural disasters to make money is a common tactic of the monopolist bourgeoisie. Whether it is the "national economic pandemic" implemented by the revisionists during the pandemic or the U.S. using wildfires to demand an increase in the government debt ceiling, both are about constructing public facilities, expanding infrastructure investments, and other seemingly "beneficial to the country and the people" measures that require large increases in government fiscal debt. However, the funds of the bourgeois government do not come from nowhere; they rely on loans from national banks and money printing, artificially increasing the circulating currency in the market. Since modern credit money has long been decoupled from the value of precious metals, an increase in the money supply under conditions of stable commodity value inevitably leads to rising prices and inflation. Lenin pointed out that **"excessive issuance of paper money is a form of the worst forced public debt, which sharply worsens the living conditions of workers and the poor."** The bourgeois government exploits the people in this way, serving the interests of capitalists.Faced with these wildfires, whether it is the U.S. or the Chinese imperialist bureaucrats, they all look on the suffering of the masses with indifference, fully embodying the essence of imperialism. From the very beginning of the wildfire outbreak, American politicians immediately began to blame each other, treating the suffering people affected by the fire as political “cannon fodder” for mutual attack. However, all these reactionary government mouthpieces coincidentally avoided the same topic: questioning the monopolization of vast water resources by the rich landlord Resnik. In response to the righteous exposure by netizens, most mainstream American media did not report on it positively. Meanwhile, bourgeois newspapers were full of rumors defending the wealthy. On January 13th, the website of Fortune magazine stated: “The claim that a billionaire couple’s control of water supply damaged efforts to extinguish the Los Angeles fires is false.” Seth Ostert, CEO of the agricultural company Wonderful controlled by Resnik, told Fortune: “There are already enough false messages and ignorant comments on social media, but the rumors about Resnik’s wealthy family are absurd to a new level… Our headquarters are in Los Angeles, and our colleagues have also lost their homes, but even in this chaos and uncertainty, no one should spread ignorant, unreliable, and often openly anti-Semitic rumors.” They repeatedly emphasize that the water resources monopolized by the wealthy cannot be used to extinguish the wildfires, and turn around to blame the Los Angeles city government for poor public infrastructure, blaming the problem on hypocritical “environmental protection” policies. However, it is an undisputed fact that the Resnik family seized a large amount of water resources for their own benefit. In this dispute over wildfires, only the working people have suffered the deepest damage.
Caption: The nearby Chongqing wildfire and nucleic acid testing
On the other side of the ocean, the revisionist mouthpieces immediately began to use the wildfire as a topic to cloak themselves in the “superiority of the system.” On January 13th, the official WeChat account “Chongqing Release” of the Chongqing Municipal Propaganda Department (Chongqing Municipal People’s Government Information Office) published an article titled “Los Angeles, Can’t Learn from Chongqing,” using the spontaneous firefighting efforts of the people during the Beibei wildfire to praise the “party flag flying high, the party emblem shining bright, party members stepping forward” in the face of disaster; meanwhile, they attacked the U.S. for implementing a capitalist system and neglecting disaster relief work that does not generate profit. Once published, many official mouthpieces and self-media accounts reposted and quoted it, inciting the “Little Pink” youth to immediately shout and make noise, with rampant claims that “the American system is not good, the race is not good.” They show no concern for the lives and deaths of the American people, even mocking them to satisfy their petty “national pride” formed under the deception of the Chinese revisionists, launching shameless “hell jokes” to attack the suffering American people. In fact, the propaganda that the Chinese revisionists now use to promote the Beibei wildfire is nothing but bad news. The spread of the Beibei wildfire is also a complete man-made disaster; in the first few days of the fire, no official firefighting teams went to extinguish it. Instead, the Chinese revisionist government, when the fire was approaching, detained volunteers wearing “firefighting” signs at the community entrance for nucleic acid testing. Only when the fire threatened the residents’ area and potentially harmed the interests of the local bourgeoisie did they release the people to fight the fire. Although the Chinese revisionists attribute the cause of the wildfire to “unprecedented high temperature and drought,” both are inseparable from the environmental destruction caused by their monopolist class. The Chinese revisionists attempt to use the American people’s disaster to boost their own image, but ultimately, they only reveal their cruel bourgeois nature, and their true face will inevitably be thoroughly exposed!
Unlike the imperialist powers of the U.S. and China, which are helpless in the face of wildfires and even obstruct mass movements, the working people of socialist China, under the leadership of the Party, uphold the materialist worldview of “man can conquer nature,” and insist on transforming nature to defeat wildfires. The experience of fire prevention and control in Jianghua Yao Autonomous County, Hunan Province, well proves this. In fire-prone areas, people have built firebreaks on mountain ridges at the borders of counties, communes, and teams. When a wildfire occurs, it is easy to control the fire and prevent its spread, facilitating rescue efforts.
Some may ask whether such firebreaks will affect production. Historically, revisionists have slandered socialist China as developing at the expense of environmental destruction, which is pure nonsense. Jianghua Yao Autonomous County is one of the key forest areas in Hunan Province and a major county for southern cedar production. The setting up of firebreaks not only protects forest resources but also benefits other agricultural production. The local people promote the fine tradition of “hardship and self-reliance,” turning weeds and grass on the firebreaks into resources and combining them with manure. The advantageous terrain of firebreaks also makes it easier for local people to hunt wild animals, improving their material life. Maintaining firebreaks is not a one-time effort; unlike capitalism, where people pursue quick profits and abandon long-term forestry cycles, socialist enterprises prioritize politics and protect the interests of poor peasants by maintaining firebreaks. The people in Jianghua forest area repair firebreaks every autumn and winter (the high season for wildfires), and when spring arrives and weeds grow again, they repair them once more. Additionally, Jianghua has established fireproof forest belts based on existing firebreaks, using multi-layered, densely planted forests with trees such as wood荷 (wood荷), nanmu (楠木), yew (杨梅), and tea, which have high moisture content, fast growth, and strong sprouting ability. These trees are relatively fire-resistant. Such fireproof forest belts also require proper management, including regular clearing of dead branches and leaves to promote growth and enhance fire resistance, preventing ground fires from spreading. Clearly, this fire prevention movement, which aims to benefit the broad masses of workers and mobilize the people extensively, is something that decadent imperialist countries cannot even dream of.
In forest areas like Jianghua with vast mountains, dense forests, and frequent fires, wildfires are very easy to occur. However, the socialist working people actively respond to potential wildfires. They identify different burning colors of soil and smoke characteristics to distinguish normal agricultural fires from wildfires. They also set up various lookout points, promptly report fire conditions to the fire prevention command, and organize rescue efforts. The main reliance for fire prevention and control is human effort. To protect people’s property, the fire lookout personnel are selected by the fire prevention command from politically reliable forest protection activists, strictly preventing sabotage by class enemies. During periods of high fire risk and frequent use of fire in forest areas, vigilance is heightened; during rainy, foggy, or low-fire periods, they study Mao Zedong’s works and forest protection knowledge, familiarize themselves with terrain, and purchase daily necessities, ensuring political study, production, and fire prevention go hand in hand. To prepare for firefighting, socialist China also calls on all regions to organize fire brigades with militia as the backbone, learn firefighting techniques, and be ready to “respond immediately” once wildfires are discovered.
Today, the bourgeoisie of capitalist China and the U.S. are not unaware of these techniques; they also possess more advanced productive forces. However, in class society, all technology serves a particular class; there is no supra-class technology. For profit, the bourgeoisie will never fully mobilize the masses or truly utilize advanced technology to combat wildfires. Socialist China is led by the Communist Party with centralized leadership, unlike the hypocritical disputes between the Republican and Democratic parties, with proletarian political principles at the core, no superficial nucleic acid testing projects, socialist public ownership, and no monopolization of water resources by the Resnik family. Ultimately, the solution to the wildfire problem lies with the people. “Among all things in the world, man is the most precious. Under the leadership of the Communist Party, as long as there are people, human miracles can be created.” The current capitalist system is a prison for the people; only under the leadership of the Communist Party can the masses truly exert their strength and eliminate all “public hazards.” When that day comes, the wildfires raging across the Pacific, causing countless poor people to be displaced and suffering, will forever become a thing of the past with capitalism.