Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of the accompanying video from noted historian and Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson.
I’m here in California. I’ve been a lifelong resident of the state, fifth generation to live in the same house. I had a house in the Sierra, and it would almost burn down three years ago during the Aspen Fire, and I’m speaking on the evening when you’ve all heard about the disastrous fire in Los Angeles.
As I’m speaking on a Wednesday night, there have been 15,000 acres, 1,000 structures destroyed. Nobody knows how many people are killed or missing. And how do we characterize this? Everybody’s talking about the Santa Ana winds, climate change—I mean everybody, the people in power.
But it was preventable. And once it started, this fire, it could have been assuaged. You could have had it lessened, that…
