Rick Caruso on Pacific Palisades Wildfire: It’s Devastating; It Looks Like We’re in a 3rd World Country’

CARUSO: “My heart goes out, obviously, to the people with their homes, and I’m watching the small businesses around us go up in flames. You know, this is people’s livelihoods. So, it’s devastating. But what is most concerning to me is our first responders and our firefighters who are trying to battle this, there’s no water in the Palisades. There’s no water coming out of the fire hydrants. This is an absolute mismanagement by the city, not the firefighters’ fault, but the city’s. And I’m going to be very honest, we’ve got a mayor that’s out of the country and we got a city that’s burning and there’s no resources to put out fires. So as you look at your pictures, you don’t see the firefighters there because there’s nothing they could do. And it looks like we’re in a third-world country here. We’ve got a lot of tough questions that we need to ask the mayor and the city council and our representatives and the county representatives. Why didn’t you work to mitigate this? What was your brush mitigation program? I heard you earlier talking about it’s been dry because it hasn’t been raining. That’s not the biggest problem here. The brush up in these hills that are controlled by the city and the county, I would beg you that they haven’t been handled, mitigated, pruned or moved for probably 30 or 40 years. This was a disaster waiting to happen. And what’s predictable is preventable. And who’s paying the price are all of these people in their homes and their businesses tonight. Now, we will rebuild, but the majority of this community is gonna have a tough time rebuilding their lives.”