California fire chief reveals BIG issue with federal forest agencies

California may be in the midst of burning, but it’s not just Democrat Governor Newsom’s state that needs to clean up its forests before more devastating fires break out.

Orange County Fire Authority Chief Brian Fennessy knows this all too well and agrees with Glenn Beck of “The Glenn Beck Program” that what has happened in California was “totally predictable.”

“When I started back in 1978, we’d usually have a few days' notice. You know, meteorology is not what it is today. We started to get notified about 10 days out, and then confidence builds at seven days, and then when you’re about four days out, we’re pretty sure what to expect,” Fennessy tells Glenn.

“It seems as though it was known that this was going to happen,” Glenn responds. “This is routine. You expect the Santa Ana winds every year, you expect forest fires and brushfires in California every year.”

“It seems like incompetence of cutting the funding for the fire agencies, not really truly being prepared, and then on top of it, it seems incompetence to a level that is almost criminal. And then the third part of this, as we see it, as I see it, is there might be some actors after the main fire started,” he continues.

“I don’t know for sure,” Fennessy responds. “I will tell you this. I grew up in Altadena, and that’s one of the towns that’s pretty well wiped out. And so, when you live that close to the foothills, you’re used to Santa Ana winds.”

However, Fennessy is getting a similar story to Glenn’s.

“I’m probably hearing the same things that you are, that reservoirs may not have been as filled as they needed to be. Yes, a draw on the system can cause some decrease in pressure, but I’ve never heard of it, but I’ve never heard of anything where there actually wasn’t pressure,” Fennessy says.

“I do know, and I’ve shared this with people, that in 2003, in San Diego, we had at the time the largest fire in California history. We lost pressure, but that was because pump houses, pump stations, had been burned and we didn’t know they existed,” he continues. “Had we known, we’d have protected those pump houses as much as we protect a house.”

Fennessy believes that it’s not just water supply and pump houses, but that even more can be done to prevent wildfires all around the country.

“I’ve worked for both the USDA and the USDI, and let’s face it,” Fennessy says. “Firefighters for decades have done such a great job at suppressing fires quickly that it’s caused this growth and we’ve got an unhealthy landscape out there.”

“We need to start putting beneficial fire back on the landscape; we need to clear the brush,” he continues. “We need to do something about this unhealthy forest.”

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