Democrats in the California State Legislature who are allies of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) have proposed legislation that would ban private firefighting companies from hooking up to public fire hydrants in an emergency.
The legislation is aimed at billionaire developer Rick Caruso, who ran against Bass in 2022, and who protected his Palisades Village mall in Pacific Palisades using private firefighting companies during the recent devastating fire.
The bill, AB 1075, is sponsored by Assemblymembers Isaac Bryan (D-Los Angeles) and Tina McKinnor (D-Inglewood) — both of whom, Politico notes, are close allies of Mayor Bass, who is facing criticism for her failures in the fires.
The text of the bill would “require the [Office of Emergency Services] to develop regulations prohibiting privately contracted firefighters from hooking up their equipment to public water sources” during an “active fire incident.”
It is not clear that the legislation would actually achieve anything. Fire hydrants in the Palisades Fire, and in the Eaton Fire in Pasadena and Altadena, lacked water pressure for any fire crews, whether public or private, to use.
The 117-million gallon Santa Ynez Reservoir atop Pacific Palisades was also almost entirely empty before the fire due to maintenance by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) to comply with federal regulations.
As videos recorded by Breitbart News in the immediate aftermath of the fire also showed, Caruso’s private firefighting crews used their own mobile water tankers, who brought water into the Pacific Palisades, where there was too little.
Bass is facing growing pressure after she fired L.A. Fire Department chief Kristin Crowley last week, blaming her for not pre-deploying firefighters to the Pacific Palisades ahead of the extreme winds of January 7, and for failing to tell her not to travel to Africa (after Bass had made a campaign promise not to take international trips while in office).
As Breitbart News reported, Crowley did not pre-deploy firefighters partly because of Bass’s budget cuts to overtime pay.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.