As wildfires continue to rage in Los Angeles, Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-AR) claimed that Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) opted out of an opportunity to legislate federal protections to prevent them.
Over 88,000 Californians remain under evacuation orders, largely in the Los Angeles area, as of Wednesday. At least 25 people have died as multiple wildfires are spreading across the region.
Westerman appeared Wednesday on Fox Business’s Mornings with Maria to point out that Schumer rejected his Fix Our Forests Act, which passed the House of Representatives in September 2024, while Schumer was still the Senate majority leader. The legislation would have, among other things, improved the safety of power lines long before this month’s windstorm toppled a power line in Southern California and sparked one of the various fires.
Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) “voted for this bill along with 55 other Democrats, but Chuck Schumer wouldn’t bring it up for a vote,” Westerman said. “If we had passed the bill at the end of last year, it wouldn’t have stopped this fire, but this is policy that we’ve been trying to get passed. I’ve been here a decade and we’ve gotten policies like this passed. We had small victories. We’ve seen thinning projects done around south Lake Tahoe that have saved whole communities. We know this works it just has to be put in place.”
“You know you sleep in the bed that you make, and these policies have made a really bad bed the people in California have to sleep in right now,” Westerman said.
The Fix Our Forests Act called for fire-prevention treatment in the forests at the highest risk and promoted collaboration between the federal, state, and local governments. It came during a year during which 60,000 fires burned a combined 8.8 million acres.
A majority of the fires have sparked in the Los Angeles National Forest, which sits in a steep canyon. The subsequent wind storm helped spread the fire. Westerman suggested that communities pursue fireproofing infrastructure to prevent future fires.
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Since her tenure began in 2022, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass cut $17.6 million from the emergency services budget, which directly compromised fire departments. Meanwhile, the hydrants in the Pacific Palisades community ran out of water. The areas have supplied hydrants with water from nearby reservoirs and water tanks but have since needed to transport water in, per the Los Angeles Water and Power Department.
Over a week after the fires first sparked, there are reported flames in over 40,000 acres in Southern California. Many of the fires have spread into neighborhoods and destroyed homes.