Misleading claims distract from the unprecedented conditions that led to Los Angeles wildfires. (Inside Climate News, January 11, 2025)

From the Pulitzer Prize winning Inside Climate News: 

Misleading claims distract from the unprecedented conditions that led to Los Angeles wildfires

Fish and wildfires don’t tend to go together. But as a series of blazes driven by 100-mile-per-hour winds burned throughout Los Angeles, the country’s incoming president centered blame on a three-inch fish found in a completely different part of the state. In a post on incoming President Donald Trump’s Truth Social, he blamed California Gov. Gavin Newsom for not signing an agreement “that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way” all to “protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt.”  The post was just one of many flooding social media with misinformation and falsehoods assigning blame for the unprecedented fires that have destroyed thousands of homes, forced over 130,000 people to evacuate and killed at least five people. The Palisades, Eaton and Hurst fires are already the most destructive in the history of the nation’s second-largest city, with all three continuing to burn with little if any containment so far and another fire breaking out in the city Thursday evening. Nowhere to be found in Trump’s message was the impact of climate change or how communities have been built in areas prone to fire. Just false mentions of the little-known endangered fish causing fire hydrants to run dry. The finger-pointing surrounding the LA fires offer a glimpse of the way political polarization and propaganda can increase the confusion that engulfs natural disasters. And the information ecosystem is expected to be further tested during climate-fueled disasters as social media platforms like Facebook roll back fact-checking programs. More of our coverage of the biggest story on the planet: Nearly all major global climate datasets agree that, in 2024, human-caused global warming for the first time pushed Earth’s average surface temperature to more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average for a full calendar year. Under President Biden’s administration, addressing climate change became an integral part of the mission of USAID—an agency created 63 years ago to advance the national interest by helping foreign countries in need. On the U.S.-Mexico border, the International Boundary and Water Commission has the unglamorous job of stopping sewage flows and negotiating water disputes. Commissioner Maria-Elena Giner has earned allies in long-standing border conflicts, a job that won’t get any easier under Trump.

Misinformation Spreads Like Wildfire Online While LA Neighborhoods Burn BY WYATT MYSKOW, MARTHA PSKOWSKI Misleading claims and falsehoods about water and firefighting resources distracted from the unprecedented conditions that left Los Angeles primed for the most destructive fire in its history.

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