Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office blasted President Donald Trump for critiquing the state’s water supply to fight wildfire preparedness Wednesday while omitting that a reservoir in the Pacific Palisades area reportedly sat empty while flames engulfed Southern California.
The press office X account argued that state reservoirs were at “historic highs” at the time and referenced a January post which states that “many of our largest reservoirs are at or above their historic average storage for this time of year,” though the post does not list the Santa Ynez reservoir that reportedly sat empty in the Pacific Palisades region for months ahead of the catastrophe. The Palisades fire burned for 24 days in January, wiping out over 20,000 acres, eviscerating thousands of homes and ending dozens of lives, while some local officials signaled that water infrastructure problems led to fire hydrants running dry.
“Unfortunately, the President of the United States is a bumbling idiot,” the press office wrote Wednesday. “THERE WAS PLENTY OF WATER IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA (IN FACT, STATE RESERVOIRS WERE AT HISTORIC HIGHS!)”
Unfortunately, the President of the United States is a bumbling idiot.
THERE WAS PLENTY OF WATER IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA (IN FACT, STATE RESERVOIRS WERE AT HISTORIC HIGHS!)
https://t.co/eaBb3hRckn https://t.co/nQhdEI7YBM
— Governor Newsom Press Office (@GovPressOffice) September 3, 2025
Newsom’s office told the DCNF that the Santa Ynez reservoir is managed locally and a spokesperson for the California Department of Water Resources told the DCNF that the Santa Ynez reservoir was dry because it was awaiting “required repairs.”
“He didn’t allow the water to come from the Pacific Northwest. … They send the water out to the Pacific Ocean, so I demanded that to be open. If that were open, you wouldn’t have had the fire because all the sprinklers would’ve worked in the houses. They had no water. They had no water in the fire hydrants,” Trump said in the video Newsom’s office highlighted on Wednesday. “There’s something wrong with these people.”
Newsom’s post railing against Trump also failed to mention that local officials reportedly failed to address known water infrastructure issues in the Palisades area ahead of the fire as hydrants and water tanks also reportedly ran dry as emergency responders tried to extinguish the flames. Following the disaster, devastated parts of Southern California have struggled to rebuild quickly thanks in part to strict permitting requirements, energy policy experts explained to the Daily Caller News Foundation previously.
Newsom announced that he was launching an investigation into the factors that led to the hydrant failures and the reportedly empty Santa Ynez reservoir on X in January.
“The ongoing reports of the loss of water pressure to some local fire hydrants during the fires and the reported unavailability of water supplies from the Santa Ynez Reservoir are deeply troubling to me and to the community,” Newsom wrote on Jan. 10. “We need answers to ensure this does not happen again and we have every resource available to fight these catastrophic fires.”
After the fires, Los Angeles residents sharply criticized Newsom and Democratic Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass for poor leadership and inadequate emergency preparedness. Many locals argued the disaster exposed deeper failures in public safety management, intensifying distrust of California’s Democrat leaders.
Newsom issued a $1 billion 2019 executive order aimed at boosting California’s wildfire preparedness and resiliency. However, a 2021 investigation by CapRadio — a National Public Radio outlet in California — found that his administration had fallen short on key parts of the program while embellishing its achievements. The report specifically found that “Newsom overstated, by an astounding 690%, the number of acres treated with fuel breaks and prescribed burns in the very forestry projects he said needed to be prioritized to protect the state’s most vulnerable communities.”
Trump has also repeatedly attributed the tragedy to Newsom and his administration, referencing the reported inadequate access to water to extinguish the flames. Newsom’s office referenced a Guardian article on X which notes that two different reservoirs in the region do not flow to the ocean, contending with Trump’s point that the governor needed to open access to the Pacific, though it neglected to note that a reservoir near the affected area was empty and that fire hydrants were reportedly running dry.
The hydrant failures stemmed from the city’s water infrastructure being unable to handle the sudden surge in demand, rather than a shortage of water in the broader system, according to Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) CEO Janisse Quiñones. Notably, the state allows billions of gallons of runoff flow into the Pacific each year because it lacks the infrastructure to capture significant amounts of stormwater, the Los Angeles Times reported in March 2024.
Additionally, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Thursday that it is suing the utility company Southern California Edison over alleged negligence that sparked a 2022 fire as well as the Eaton fire in January, which overlapped with the Palisades fire.
Edison and Bass’ office did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.
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