Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso said he expects Congress to put stipulations on the aid money for the Los Angeles fires requiring better state management of prevention and firefighting.

“I expect that there will be strings attached to money that is ultimately approved, and it has to do with being ready the next time, because this was a gross failure this time,” the Wyoming Republican said Sunday on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.”

He said there is “gross mismanagement in California by elected officials.”

“It’s heartbreaking to hear the fire chief say that they’ve diverted all of this money away from the fire department to be used for social programs when they were already stretched too thin,” he said.

President-elect Donald Trump and Republicans have blamed California Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Californian officials for lack of water to fight the fires and for poor forest management. Mr. Trump called on Mr. Newsom to resign.

“The fires are still raging in L.A. The incompetent pols have no idea who to put them out,” Mr. Trump wrote in an early Sunday morning Truth Social post.

“Thousands of magnificent houses are gone, and many more will soon be lost. There is death all over the place. This is one of the worst catastrophes in the history of our Country, they just can’t put out the fires. What’s wrong with them?” he wrote.

The fires have killed at least 16 people as they have swept over 37,000 acres in the Los Angeles area.

Mr. Newsom has denounced Mr. Trump’s comments, saying last week that the president-elect was politicizing the fires.

In an interview Sunday, the California governor said the “mis- and disinformation I don’t think advantages or aids any of us.

“Responding to Donald Trump’s insults, we would spend another month. I’m very familiar with them,” he said. “Every elected official that he disagrees with is very familiar with them.”

• Mallory Wilson can be reached at mwilson@washingtontimes.com.