So far, the federal government is in large part failing the victims of Los Angeles County’s January firestorms that swept through the Pacific Palisades and Altadena areas. Things are not how President Trump said they would be.
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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 identification laws, a longtime Republican goal.
So much for the American tradition of nonpartisan disaster relief. There’s also Trump’s concerted attempt to downsize and virtually eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which has taken charge of 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 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 that removing wildfire debris and up to 6 inches of topsoil is good enough to eliminate immediate public health risks.
What about burned-out homeowners, though, virtually none of whom are getting toxics-testing funds as part of their homeowner insurance settlements? They have little or no money for testing, which is 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. However, Newsom faces a $12 billion state budget deficit. Every dollar spent on toxics testing for homeowners could be a dollar taken from anything 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 home valued at more than $3 million. Who’s going to pull a building permit, though, 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 he posed it.
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 of that 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.
However, Purdue’s 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. That paltry effort has not been matched by the city of Los Angeles, which includes Pacific Palisades. The city is battling its own budget deficit of more than a billion dollars.
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 may 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.
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com, and read more of his columns online at californiafocus.net.
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