From billionaires to everyday people, the Los Angeles wildfires have ravaged the homes of tens of thousands. According to Urban Wire, the Los Angeles fires displaced more than 150,000 residents from their homes. More than 16,000 structures have been destroyed, and the city’s homelessness crisis has grown even more severe.
The response to disasters like the Los Angeles fires has become a politically polarized issue. Instead of working towards a solution, politicians and people on social media blame opposing political parties.
Verde believes the United States shouldn’t politicize natural disasters because polarization, whether it’s among politicians or the public, only slows response and makes it harder to create effective solutions.
Natural disasters are inevitable, regardless of what political party you belong to. The best thing we can do to improve the situation is to provide immediate assistance to those who need it most without accusing the other party of mismanagement and inefficiency.
According to Kristin Taylor, a professor of political science at Wayne State University, natural disasters have been used as leverage by politicians for years to gain support or to push their agendas.
“It [disasters] have been a very bipartisan thing, but what we have seen in the last couple of weeks is how that has shifted very dramatically,” Taylor said. “The sitting president uses disaster aid and disaster recovery aid, like the case of California, to get them to change environmental policy like that and to use disaster policy as a political tool to achieve unrelated policy outcomes.”
In a tense press conference on Jan. 24, President Trump criticized FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the nationalized response toward the Los Angeles fires as “incompetently run.” He suggested that the states should handle natural disasters themselves because localized approaches would be more efficient and effective. Trump also mentioned that FEMA’s response “costs about three times more” than certain localized approaches and blamed California’s government for not managing the situation well.
The media has also seen heavy political involvement from Hurricane Helene. The political attacks from both major parties showcased greater polarization, and the election became, in part, a fight over federal disaster relief.
While many were left unhoused and injured, government officials were disputing amongst themselves about who was avoiding the other’s phone calls about emergency aid, according to Axios. This showed a lack of federal coordination, and the bickering did nothing to help the people who lost their homes and loved ones to the disaster.
Previous natural disasters have shown that the government is capable of working together to address these crises.
When the U.S. was devastated by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, which also occurred during a presidential election year, President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney halted their campaigns in order to provide assistance in their own ways. They did so by reorganizing a planned rally as a relief effort and making visits to national disaster relief organizations, which shows how disaster reliefs were less polarized than they are today.
Taylor pointed out that, in the past, disaster response was more bipartisan.
“Up until COVID, there was a large degree of bipartisan cooperation between whichever president was in the White House and whoever was in the governor’s seat in each state,” Taylor said. “If you think about Superstorm Sandy, there are pictures of Barack Obama and then- Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey standing shoulder to shoulder, like they [were] in this together. They [were] here to help the American people, and in that broad degree of cooperation between federal and state officials, regardless of party affiliation, has been the norm there.”
While we’ve become divided in many ways as a nation, we cannot afford to let our divisions be used as leverage when Americans are suffering.
