Rick Caruso isn’t holding back on his thoughts surrounding the devastating Los Angeles wildfires and what he felt leadership did wrong when it came to prevention.
The billionaire real estate developer and former L.A. mayoral candidate was a guest on the season 23 premiere of Real Time With Bill Maher, where the host asked him about how he would have handled the fires differently.
“To know there’s a fire coming, to know you’re in fire season,” Caruso said. “We had a fire three weeks ago in Malibu. Six years ago we had a fire in Brentwood, and for those that don’t know the Brentwood area, it’s 15 minutes from where the Palisades Fire was. There’s 40-year-old vegetation between Brentwood and the Palisades, and at that time, I said, ‘If that fire travels, it’s gonna come through and wipe out the Palisades.”
“I’m so sad that I was right,” he added. “It was predictable, Bill. And what’s predictable is preventable.”
He continued, “And then on top of it, to have a main reservoir out of service during peak fire season. I mean, that’s border negligence. And so we’ve got to get to the backstory of this, but you’ve gotta make good business decisions. Running this city is running a business for the benefit of the residents and what everybody should have been saying, ‘We had all the alerts about the firestorm coming in or the winds coming in… why wasn’t more done?’”
After the fires initially broke out in the Pacific Palisades on Jan. 7, fanned by strong Santa Ana winds, blazes continued to erupt across Los Angeles County. While first responders have worked night and day to contain the flames, more than 12,000 homes, buildings and structures were destroyed in the fires’ paths. At least 25 people were also killed.
Bill Maher proceeded to ask Caruso his perspective on how Los Angeles should be navigating recovery and rebuilding efforts.
“What we should be doing in the city and what we should do now, we have an opportunity: underground the power lines,” he responded. “But when everybody starts talking about rebuilding, yes, we need to rebuild quickly, and yes, we need to get people back in their homes, but we also need to be smart about it because the Palisades, just like Altadena, — and God bless the families there too — the Palisades is gonna remain in a fire zone. So don’t go build the same damn thing.”
Caruso, who also owns the Palisades Village, later explained how the shopping complex withstood the firestorm. It was previously reported that businessman also hired private firefighters to protect it.
“We built it differently,” he said. “That whole village that we built is built without any combustible materials. We knew we were building in a fire area, so we designed it to the highest levels to withstand it.”
Maher also questioned Caruso if it’s “good” to hire private firefighters because “not everybody can afford the private fire department.”
“Of course it’s good because by us having our home team there, it freed up the L.A. Fire Department to go take care of other people,” he replied. “But here’s what I would tell you, if we have a fully funded fire department that has more resources, you wouldn’t need the privates.”
Caruso added, “People talking about how Caruso shouldn’t have saved his downtown village. That downtown village included eight homes that we saved. It includes all the retailers and the restaurateurs. Hundreds of jobs are saved. We’re gonna reopen it. People get their businesses back. What’s not being talked about now are the thousands of people that have lost their jobs, that have no support system: the gardeners, the pool men, the service people, the delivery people, the waiters, the chefs. Everybody’s gonna have their job back that has their businesses in our village. That is the right thing to do, and we’ve got to figure out how to get help to those that need help the most, and there’s a lot of people out there.”
Caruso also noted during his conversation with Maher that while his Palisades house was OK, his daughter’s burned down in the fires.
The other guests featured on the latest episode of Real Time were Larry Wilmore and Erin Perrine.