Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough blamed “slashed” infrastructure spending for the “complete failure of government to protect” the homes of Los Angeles residents from wildfires this week.
Wildfires continued to burn for a fourth day in areas of the city as the official death toll doubled to 10 people, and 179,000 residents remain evacuated from their homes.
In a somber opening to Friday’s show, Scarborough reflected that LA was a “hellscape” before drawing similarities with the devastation caused in New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina 2005 by failures in policy pushing critical infrastructure development.
You know, because of the proximity of where I lived in Pensacola, Florida, I was over in Louisiana and Mississippi every day after Katrina. I’ve got to say, there are a lot of parallels here.
During Katrina, levees that were part of the city’s hurricane protection program failed, resulting in widespread flooding. It emerged that the project was only 60-90 percent completed, hampered by budget cuts and subsequent delays.
Scarborough continued, saying the struggle to fight the wildfires in LA were symptomatic of a “30 years” trend that saw investment in infrastructure and planning “slashed.”
We don’t know the exact causes for the complete failure of government to be able to protect these homes. I don’t think we can say it’s the smelt alone. We don’t know what it is. But I do think it is going to be like hurricane Katrina. I mean, the infrastructure has been slashed. You can’t just say it is [LA mayor] Karen Bass. You can’t just say it is [Governor] Gavin Newsom. This has been a trend for 30 years.
Infrastructure has been slashed across America. You do have climate change, so you have wildfires sweeping into urban areas. They’re kind of like fighting the last war. But I just… the longer we get into this, the more I think about how New Orleans didn’t invest in their levee system, how they didn’t invest in critical infrastructure, and people died because of it. It’s just hard to hear people say in one of the richest cities in the world say ‘Oh, we don’t have enough water to protect people’s homes.’
After contributions from co-panelists, the host added to his point, pressing on the parallels with New Orleans and Katrina, explaining the multi-faceted and complex nature of what had led to so many homes being destroyed.
A couple of things happening. You have urban sprawl, where people are moving neighborhoods out to places where they never were before. Areas where you have more wildfires than urban fires. Then you have climate change. With all of that, you have a community, I guess, a municipality, that did not keep up with the realities of those dramatic, radical changes.
Scarborough said the incident was a national “wake-up call” to begin planning for events as populations grow and climate challenges arise.
Just like the Ninth Ward in New Orleans, this should be a wake-up call, very late, but a wake-up call, not only to Los Angeles and to California, but to politicians, local and state politicians across America. You have to fight the new battle. With urban sprawl, with climate change, with people moving into flood zones, with people moving into zones where there are wildfires, something is going to give.
It happened in Katrina. It happened here.
Watch above on MSNBC.
