Viewpoint: Home for the Holidays. Not This Year.

My kids called them “crack bars,” because the cookies were so addictive you couldn’t stop eating them – a pecan pie bar on a cookie crust. Every December at our home in Pacific Palisades, I’d make eight different kinds of Christmas cookies, pack them in festive boxes and give them to neighbors and friends. Not this year. My house is gone. My longtime next door neighbors are gone.

Everywhere there are ads about “going home” for the holidays. People in Pacific Palisades and Altadena have no home to go to.

We now live in a small apartment with rented furniture. This Christmas, I won’t be putting out my collection of nutcrackers, the hand-made nativity scene (given by my mother-in-law when the children were small), the little Dickens Village that occupied the living room, the hand-made stockings over the chimney and the Santa decorations and lights outside. Everything burned.

We were forced out of Pacific Palisades, not because of a climate-change intense fire, but because of incompetence. The fire could have been prevented. Governor Gavin Newsom could have insisted that brush be cleared from state park lands abutting the Palisades. It was not. Environmental groups said no. Nothing was done and decades of growth burned. Fires are a regular occurrence in this state and should have been managed.

Newsom oversaw AB 1054 a “21 billion “wildfire fund,” which was funded half by residents and half by utility companies, so when people sued utility companies for their culpability in starting fires, residents pay.

The governor was in Brazil pointing out that clean energy and innovation are a win-win for the health of the plant—maybe he forgot all the smoke and debris from the Palisades Fire and the burned lithium batteries from electric cars.  He was very proud that two-thirds of the state was powered by clean energy. He forgot to mention gas is almost $5 a gallon and that workers are seeing a dip in their income because it costs $50 for just 10 gallons – and prices are rising.

Newsom and Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara took care of insurance in the state, by destroying it. A New York Times story reported how people were left without insurance or with the Fair Plan. They never wrote about how some insurance companies, such as State Farm, refuse to pay full premiums. When a resident writes the California State Insurance Commission for help with insurance, they write a letter, but there’s never any result.

Why? It would seem that the governor would want people to get their premiums, but . . .that’s not the case.

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass’ lack of leadership saw nearly 7,000 properties burn, and 12 lives claimed. Text messages and anonymous letters from firefighters have started to surface pointing fingers at the inexperienced leadership that did not prevent a January 1 fire from reigniting.

Under Bass, there were no police to help with evacuations on January 7, and people in cars left them and fled down the streets.

The L.A. Department of Water and Power never turned off electricity during the “hurricane force “winds (which were actually about 40 mph),  aging electrical poles snapped and the downed electrical lines, made it impossible for firefighters to traverse streets. The DWP had not bothered to see if reservoirs were filled or if hydrants were working. Where was Mayor Bass? . . .overseeing the Inside Safe program and spending nearly $322 million to help 4,972 homeless – with about a 58 percent retention rate.

“The Fire of a Century, Nothing to be Done,” were headlines after the January 7 Fire. Politicians hoped that people would not start asking questions and discovering there was something that could have been done, that the fire could have been prevented.

Even if one believes the January 7 fire was “unstoppable.” What do you say about January 8? About half the Palisades burned that day and that included churches, condominiums, the entire Via de la Paz business street and residences.

There’s a photo of Mayor Bass and Governor Newsom, walking by the Chase Building on the morning of January 8. The fire in that building had just started,  and it, too,  burned to the ground. An independent investigation needs to be done on the lack of firefighting or aerial support on January 8.

I grew up in poverty on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. I saved over a lifetime to be able to buy my children, now adults something special for Christmas. Each year I selected a beautiful ornament specific for each child: for my oldest, hearts, for my middle child, angels and for my youngest, Santa Claus. Gone. Ashes.

No, my kids won’t be coming home for the holidays. Nor will we.