Literally nothing will ever change the minds of millions of Americans who think the climate emergency is a vast left-wing conspiracy. But to most, the January blazes in the Los Angeles area were a powerful affirmation that the world is becoming hotter, dryer and more dangerous, including in densely populated communities previously seen at little risk. The urban fires killed at least 30 people and torched more than 18,000 structures, resulting in at least $28 billion in property damage.
Intense recriminations followed the disaster after reports that local governments hadn’t taken many basic, relatively inexpensive steps to reduce the flammable vegetation that helps wildfires explode. This contained a telling lesson for cities with conditions comparable to those in Malibu, Pacific Palisades and Altadena: They need to borrow the concept of triage from emergency medicine and use resources in a way that corresponds to the urgency and severity of the challenge they face. Instead of the usual California playbook of emphasizing bike lanes, transit improvements and other programs that in a decade or two should pay off in decreased greenhouse gas emissions, officials must focus intensely on preventing an encore of the L.A. disaster — in the short term — within their city limits.
Somehow, this hasn’t happened in San Diego, a city full of neighborhoods with homes adjacent to canyons and wooded areas. At an April 23 City Council committee meeting, officials itted that two years after a damning city audit, most of its recommendations for wildfire prevention remain stalled. This was partly blamed on strained city finances, which were depicted as being in such poor shape that some officials didn’t even disclose their fire prevention needs to the City Council. This revelation had to put the city’s many nervous homeowners even more on edge.
But after being asked in several emails by an editorial writer if the L.A. inferno showed the need for a triage approach, a spokesperson for Mayor Todd Gloria defended his handling of the fire threat. While not providing a specific estimate of what the city had spent on bike lanes, the spokesperson said an August 2024 CBS News 8 report that pegged such spending at $55 million since 2015 “wildly overstates” city outlays and noted that many bike lanes are SANDAG projects. “Yes, we do believe we are prioritizing fire and life safety over and above all other concerns. The investment in brush management is holding steady in spite of our enormous budget deficit, as is our storm channel maintenance and capacity-upgrade work,” the aide wrote. “City staff continues to work toward making processes more efficient and seeking additional funding in order to do more. The city’s brush-management investments sur our long-range climate planning costs by millions of dollars. The contract managed by Open Space Division alone is about equal to the entire Sustainability and Mobility Department’s budget.”
But “holding steady” in brush management “investment” isn’t nearly good enough. And accepting bureaucratic inertia is also indefensible. Given the stakes, it is shocking that the Fire-Rescue Department still lacks authority to proactively inspect brush on city land because a necessary istrative rule — promised in 2023 — was never written. The Parks and Recreation Department has also been unable to follow through on taking over brush work from other departments. Too often, the default position is that agencies can only handle new assignments if they have more workers.
Which brings us back to the concept of triage and using resources in a way that maximizes the good that results: How many of the tasks that these departments now use their staffs to handle are actually more important than striving to prevent San Diego’s version of L.A.’s nightmare? Some will certainly qualify. But not all. And if thousands of homes burn in University City, Rancho Peñasquitos, Scripps Ranch and areas near Mission Trails Regional Park at least partly as a result, there should be hell to pay.
