A long history of human factors.
The following was first published on SHARYL ATTKISSON‘s Substack

As I’ve flipped around on TV and the Internet to look at the California wildfire coverage, I rarely hear the national reporters and analysts addressing what is really one of the most important and obvious elements: What’s causing the fires?
The announcers use language such as, “Six more fires broke out…” and “Two more fires popped up,” as if somehow fires are mysteriously spontaneously combusting out of nowhere.
Well, we all know that doesn’t happen.
Why isn’t there more reporting emphasis on getting at the causes of these fires? Even if we don’t know suspected causes for all of them, there are certainly investigations underway, and suspicions for some of them.
But too often it’s as if the news reporters don’t seem very curious. They don’t point out what’s being done to figure out the causes, or what the suspected causes are.
A look at recent history shows that arson and faulty power lines are most frequently to blame for California’s fires. Lightning strikes from storms are also a factor, but in recent weeks there have been no reports of storms in the afflicted area.
On my Sunday television program “Full Measure,” we’ve been reporting on the human factors behind a lot of the devastation in California’s past wildfires, and in the aftermath of the current disasters.
For example, in November of 2018, flames blew through Paradise, California in less than 24 hours, torching more than 31 square miles. It became known as the Camp Fire, killing 85 people and destroying nearly 19,000 homes.
The fire was caused by electrical transmission lines, owned and operated by PG&E.
According to a 700-page investigation by the state, PG&E failed to inspect and maintain an aging electrical tower. It wasn’t an isolated case. PG&E equipment reportedly sparked 19 major blazes in 2017 and 2018.
PG&E pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter and agreed to pay $13.5 billion to victims of the Camp Fire and other fires, and hundreds of millions to the local government.
With many open questions in the latest California fires, critics point to man made contributors to the resulting disaster: fire department budget cuts, canceled insurance policies, corruption scandals, the state’s destruction of dams that once held crucial water, an empty water reservoir near the main fire and broken or dry fire hydrants.
Read on for details. And watch my TV report below.
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/5cpeMMzAHvc?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0
Transcript from “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson.”
Once again, California’s tragic wildfires were predicted—and predictable. And once again, as they’ve done for years, they’re gobbling up billions in state and federal taxpayer dollars as critics ask why it seems to be deja vu all over again.
The causes of at least six simultaneous fires in the Los Angeles area are still under investigation. Tens of thousands of acres burned. Dozens dead or missing. More than 10,000 homes and businesses reduced to ashes.
President Biden declared federal taxpayers will pick up 6 months’ of response and recovery costs.
President Biden: So today I’m announcing the federal government will cover 100% of the cost for 180 days.
While some are quick to fault climate change or Mother Nature, the hand of man is often to blame in California’s fire disasters, with arson and faulty utility Iines top causes.
Full Measure’s Lisa Fletcher covered the investigation into the state’s deadliest fire.
Lisa Fletcher: It was November of 2018, flames blew through Paradise in less than 24 hours, torching more than 31 square miles. It became known as the Camp Fire, killing 85 people and destroying nearly 19,000 homes. The fire was caused by electrical transmission lines, owned and operated by PG&E. According to a 700-page investigation by the state, PG&E failed to inspect and maintain an aging electrical tower. It wasn’t an isolated case. PG&E equipment reportedly sparked 19 major blazes in 2017 and 2018.
PG&E, pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter and agreed to pay $13.5 billion to victims of the Camp Fire and other fires, and hundreds of millions to the local government.
With many open questions in the latest fires, critics point to man made contributors to the resulting disaster: fire department budget cuts, canceled insurance policies, corruption scandals, the state’s destruction of dams that once held crucial water, an empty water reservoir near the main fire and broken or dry fire hydrants.
California’s political and public officials have been mired in disarray. California Governor Gavin Newsom approached by a mom near her child’s burned out school.
Rachel Darvish: Governor please tell me what are you going to do right now?
Gavin Newsom: We’re getting the resources to help rebuild.
Darvish: Why was there no water in the hydrants, governor? Is it going to be different next time?
Newsom: It has to be.
When asked about supposedly dry hydrants, Newsom said this.
https://fullmeasure.news/newest-videos/la-fires-01-17-2025
Newsom: Local folks are trying to figure that out. When you have a system, not dissimilar to what we’ve seen in other extraordinary large scale fires, whether it be pipe or electricity or whether it just be the complete overwhelm of the system. I mean, those hydrants are typical for two or three fires, maybe one fire.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass insists the $17 million in fire department budget cuts she pushed for didn’t impact the fires, contrary to a memo written earlier by the fire chief.
Karen Bass: I think if you go back and look at the reductions that were made, there were no reductions that were made that would have impacted the situation that we were dealing with over the last couple of days.
Meantime, LA’s fire chief and the head of the water department, she’s paid $750,000 a year and came from the beleaguered PG&E, had emphasized equity as a top priority.
Janisse Quiñones: It’s important to me that everything we do it’s with an equity lens and social justice, and making sure that we right the wrongs that we’ve done in the past.
Add to the list of unforced errors the state poorly maintaining forests and vegetation. Experts have told us that’s a big reason why California alone suffers such regular outbursts of these uniquely destructive fires.
As Lisa Fletcher reported, South Carolina is among the states using a different management strategy.
Pritchard: Whenever you burn on a regular basis, it reduces the chance of there being a catastrophic wildfire. The crew is doing that with a “prescribed burn.” A fire set and contained to a defined area, under specific weather conditions.
Pritchard: If a fire were to come in here, say in the summer by lightning or anything like that, the intensity is going to be much less than if it had never been burned.
South Carolina is a leader in this practice, recently conducting prescribed burns on more than 340,000 acres of land. That’s more than what 9 western states burned, combined.
Ron Holt, Pritchard’s colleague at the South Carolina Forestry Commission, says a contrary mindset in the west may contribute to what fuels those catastrophic blazes.
Ron Holt: Land managers, who try to burn, whether it’s a private or federal, they have to go through so much, regulations and get approvals. And by the time they go through the process, that much more fuel has built up on the ground. And the land manager may have to start over with the burn plan.
California’s problems were predictable and predicted. Donald Trump as candidate Trump was among those warning about fire disaster looming in California.
Donald Trump: I was with the head of Austria. He said, “you know it’s a shame, I see all those forest fires in California,” and all they have to do is clean their forest, meaning, rake it up, get rid of the leaves, leaves that are sitting there for five years.
While federal taxpayers have little control over California’s policies, they’ll ultimately be picking up much of the cost of the fallout—as they have in the past—estimated in the billions.
Sharyl (on camera): Governor Newsom has called for an independent investigation into the dry fire hydrants and water shortages.

Even power lines in tip top shape can cause a fire when wind speed is severe due to falling trees, broken branches, or other debris blown onto them. If it was power lines, there will be recorded faults in transmission circuits. If they coincide with the initiation of the event, pretty easy to surmise what happened. The long delay in getting a report back on all these fires may indicate it wasn’t power line driven. Of course, CA takes a month to count votes so who knows how long a fire investigation can be strung out? But the power companies already know if it was sparked by their lines.
There have been fires in that area for tens of hundreds of years… It was referred to by the spanish as the “la Baya de los Fumos,” the bay of smoke in the 1500’s. “Native” americans used fires to hunt the area:
“…fires were deliberately started by Native Americans to facilitate their killing of wild game. They surmised that younger members of a family group would climb to the rims of the canyons and start the fires. ” Like building in hurricane prone areas, one has to question the wisdom of building in an historically wild fire prone area. If one insists on building there, unlike hurricane country, on had better have highly effective forest fire management practices in place. And as Quinonez strategy of “that everything we do it’s with an equity lens and social justice”, is a travesty. Should be up on charges of involuntary manslaughter just as PG&L was held accountable for it’s “failings”.
Colorado is another state that is doing a great job managing the forests. Cordillera Metro District in Eagle County has done an incredible job with their fire mitigation and prevention program in recent years. It could be a model for CA, particularly since so many Californians have escaped the high taxes and mismanagement by moving to CO, but sadly the Dems who moved there brought their politics with them so CO is now officially deep blue. I hope South Carolina doesn’t suffer the same fate.
Lahaina disappeared from the news.
Totally unrelated, but if one wanted to acquire a lot of expensive and built-upon land in order to redevelop it, repurpose it and perhaps bring it into government ownership, or maybe set up a tax-sheltered Non Profit to “manage” this valuable asset “sustainably”, the fires are a beneficial tragedy.