President-elect Donald Trump and some social media users and pundits blamed Los Angeles’ deadly fires on California Governor Gavin Newsom, saying the Democrat’s environmental policies enabled the blazes’ danger and wreckage.
As of January 12, authorities counted at least 16 people dead, more than 14,000 hectares (35,000 acres) burned and thousands of structures damaged or destroyed.
Some social media users reposted Trump’s 2018 and 2019 criticism of California’s forest management policies, including false statements the then-president posted as firefighters battled previous wildfires.
It is not uncommon for Trump to make false claims about his political opponents during natural disasters. In 2018, he falsely said “Democrats” had inflated Hurricane Maria’s death toll in Puerto Rico. In October 2024, he fabricated a claim that North Carolina’s Democratic governor had blocked federal aid from flowing into the state after Hurricane Helene.
As Los Angeles wildfire victims reeled from the destruction, we fact-checked these viral claims to see how, or if, California water policy and forest management factored this disaster.
Trump misleads about California water policy
As Los Angeles firefighters raced to contain blazes in the Pacific Palisades neighbourhood on January 7 and January 8, the area’s hydrant water pressure ran low, and some hydrants stopped producing water.
Trump, in a January 8 Truth Social post, blamed Newsom’s management for the water issues and said Newsom had refused to allow “beautiful, clean, fresh water to flow into California”.
“Governor Gavin [Newsom] refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him 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,” Trump said. “He wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt, by giving it less water (it didn’t work!), but didn’t care about the people of California. Now the ultimate price is being paid.”
Trump’s posts seemed to blame the water constraints on statewide water management plans that capture rain and snow as it flows from Northern California. But experts said those plans would not have affected the fire response.
Southern California has plenty of water stored, said Mark Gold, the water scarcity solutions director at the Natural Resources Defense Council and a Southern California Metropolitan Water District board member.
The local water shortages happened because the city’s infrastructure wasn’t designed to respond to a fire as large as the one that broke out in the Palisades and elsewhere, experts said.
“It doesn’t matter what’s going on at the Bay-Delta or the Colorado (River) or Eastern Sierra right now,” Gold said. “We have all this water in storage right now. The problem is, when you look at something like firefighting, it’s a more localised issue on where your water is. Do you have adequate local storage?”
Trump’s reference to a “water restoration declaration” that Newsom refused to sign is puzzling, as such a document does not appear to exist. Newsom’s press team said on social media, “There is no such document as the water restoration declaration – that is pure fiction.”
Trump’s transition team did not immediately respond to an email asking for clarification. After publication, a Trump spokesperson emailed PolitiFact referencing a plan from Trump’s first term that would have directed more water from the federal Central Valley Project to farmers in the San Joaquin Valley.
Newsom and then-California Attorney General Xavier Becerra sued the Trump administration over the plan, which they said violated protections for endangered species, including Chinook salmon and Delta smelt – a slender, 2- to 3-inch fish that is considered endangered under California’s Endangered Species Act.
