‘Woke up a green hydrogen bomb’: Historian slams California leaders for ‘senseless’ fire response

There were many things that preceded the “nonsensical” response by state leaders in Los Angeles and California to the devastating wildfires that continue to rage across the region, according to a historian and political commentator. Victor Davis Hanson.

“To mitigate a problem, you have to know what went wrong, and there were short-term and long-term problems,” Davis, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution’s public policy think tank, told Fox News Digital in an interview Tuesday. “And I don’t think climate change has played a role, at least not an immediate role.”

Davis described the situation as “an awakened green hydrogen bomb” – from Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’ the absence during the critical first 24 hours of fire hydrant emptying hell, a dysfunctional reservoir, an underfunded fire department and a lack of new water infrastructure despite Governor Gavin Newsom’s support of billions of dollars earmarked to address it.

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“It’s a very fragile system,” Hanson said. “What Gavin Newsom didn’t do was take the allocated money and build reservoirs that could accommodate the increased population. Number two, the water being pumped over [Sacramento-San Joaquin River] He let the Delta out into the bay at the request of environmentalists. In his defense, he said that the reservoirs were full. That is not true. If you look at the biggest one, it’s only 75% full, and right now we’re in semi-drought.”

Newsom told NBC News in a taped interview that aired Sunday: “The reservoirs are completely full — the state reservoirs here in Southern California. That misinformation and misinformation, I think, doesn’t benefit or help any of us.”

But as of Tuesday, Shasta Lake, California’s largest reservoir, was at 77% capacity, holding roughly 3.52 million acre-feet of water out of a total capacity of 4.55 million acre-feet. according to the Bureau of Reclamation.

Fox News Digital has reached out to Newsom’s office for comment and has not yet heard back.

California exists reservoirs can only hold so much water, and many were built in the mid-20th century.

In 2014, Golden State voters passed Proposition 1also known as the Water Quality, Supply, and Infrastructure Improvement Act, which authorized $2.7 billion in bonds to increase the state’s water storage capacity by building new reservoirs and groundwater storage facilities. However, since January, no new reservoir has been completed as part of Prop. 1.

In 2024, the state experienced record rainfall following an atmospheric river event, but the existing water infrastructure faced difficulties in managing the sudden influx of water. A significant portion of that rain has been dumped into the ocean as the state struggles to properly store water, multiple California agencies said.

“There was a reservoir of about 120 million gallons that could be used because they only had three million in reserve — that probably would have made a difference,” Hanson said. “It was dormant for almost a year, and that’s because the cover was torn. It was just pointless.”

The defunct reservoir Hanson referred to, known as the Santa Ynez Reservoir in Pacific Palisades, has been closed for repairs since February because of a crack in the cap, which is designed to maintain water quality, the Los Angeles Times first reported Tuesday.

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Hanson has a central valley a farm that relies on snowmelt from the Sierra Nevada mountains, he explained.

In California’s Central Valley, water for agriculture typically comes from the Sierra, mostly through the San Joaquin River system, which is backed up by large dams such as Shaver, Huntington, and Pine Flat. This water is often discharged into the Sacramento River, which flows into the Delta. Despite increasing demand, no new dams have been built in the San Joaquin system for decades.

On the west side of the valley, the water comes from melting snow Northern California Cascade Range and northern Sierra, filling larger reservoirs such as Oroville and Folsom. These reservoirs are designed to store water during rainy years, ensuring a constant supply in average years and a reserve for dry years.

However, California has faced an extended dry spell, with little rain or snow in recent weeks, causing reservoir levels to drop.

“So when Gavin Newsom says, well, ‘they’re full,’ they’re not all full, but they’re going down at a rapid rate, because he’s not going to stop the discharge into the ocean,” Hanson said. “They’re still going, as you and I speak, and they’re not pumping 100% of it into the aqueduct that serves agriculture in Los Angeles.”

Newsom, meanwhile, shifted the blame to local government and ordered an independent audit of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

“We need answers as to how this happened,” Newsom wrote to the department’s director and Los Angeles County Public Works Director on Jan. 10, regarding reports of the water outage.

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For his part, Newsom also proposed allocating at least $2.5 billion additional financing to boost California’s emergency response and recovery efforts in Los Angeles, his office announced Monday.

The proposed funding would support recovery and cleanup operations, improve wildfire preparedness and help reopen schools closed due to the fires. The funding would come from the state’s Emergency Disaster Response Operations account, with $1.5 billion from accelerating the use of climate bonds for immediate use, according to his office.

There has been a slight increase in containment of the deadly Palisades and Eaton fires burning in Los Angeles Countyaccording to a news release from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection Wednesday evening.

The Palisades Fire, the larger of two at 23,713 acres that had burned as of Wednesday, is 21% contained after it broke out in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood more than a week ago, according to the Department.

The Eaton Fire in the Altadena/Pasadena area was 45% contained Wednesday evening. Both fires broke out on January 7.

Fox News Digital has reached out to Bass’ office for comment.

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Fox News Digital’s Elizabeth Pritchett contributed to this report.