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With fires still burning in Los Angeles after several days, some have been accusing politicians of mismanaging resources and making the fires worse.
President-elect Donald Trump has pointed a finger squarely at California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, who he said is responsible for LA’s struggling water supply.
A lack of water for firefighter’s hoses has been cited as one of the reasons the fires have burned so long.
Meanwhile, others have blamed LA Mayor Karen Bass for cutting the city’s fire department budget.
BBC Verify looked into the facts behind the political fallout.
What has Trump claimed?
In a social media post on Saturday evening, Trump blamed California’s leaders for the current situation.
“The fires are still raging in LA. The incompetent pols have no idea how to put them out. Thousands of magnificent houses are gone, and many more will soon be lost,” he wrote on Truth Social.
“They just can’t put out the fires,” he added. “What’s wrong with them?”
Earlier in the week, he criticised Governor Newsom for refusing to sign the “water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water” to put out the fires.
In response, Newsom’s press office said: “There is no such document as the water restoration declaration – that is pure fiction.”
Trump’s spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt subsequently clarified that he’d been referring to a 2020 presidential memorandum in which Trump had sought to divert water away from Northern California to irrigate farmland further south.
This memo was a presidential directive, not a document that Governor Newsom was required to sign, although he did oppose it, saying he wanted to protect “highly imperilled fish species close to extinction”.
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