Patricia Heaton hit out at California’s leadership, claiming officials “dropped the ball” on the response to the Los Angeles wildfires.
Heaton, who has teamed up with the LA Dream Center to help residents in need, said city leaders were unprepared and questioned where taxpayer money had gone in an interview with Fox News Digital.
The ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ star called for change after ‘very harsh lesson’.
Heaton explained that Los Angeles did not seem prepared for the fires, which began to burn on January 7 in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood. Since then, multiple fires have burned in various parts of the star-studded city, destroying thousands of homes and businesses. The actress emphasized the need for forest management and reservoirs filled with water.
“I know some of the officials were saying, ‘Well, the system was overloaded.’ Well, in the event of a major fire, it will certainly be overcome,” she told Fox News Digital. “You have to know that and be prepared for that. So I think there’s a lot of money spent in LA and we can’t figure out where it’s going.”
Heaton insisted that Californians “can’t just rely on the government to take care of things.”
“It’s the people who come together in your community and insist on getting things done. And unfortunately, that’s a very, very, very harsh lesson.”
“But I think that’s what it takes to cut through that bureaucracy and get the things that government needs to do, which is looking after the infrastructure first and foremost,” Heaton said.
Heaton is working with the LA Dream Center to help with disaster relief efforts, and she’s not alone. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Kathie Lee Gifford and Chris Pratt have donated all the necessary items or money to the charity working to help those affected by the fires in Los Angeles.
“They have grown up. They have appeared. We’ve had advocacy,” Matthew Barnett, founder of the LA Dream Center, told Fox News Digital about the celebrity endorsement. “We got people like Snoop Dog the other day — like I’ve never met in my entire life — but he did a whole minute and a half of, like, an Instagram post where I was just talking.”
The LA Dream Center typically serves as a resource center focused “on providing support to those affected by homelessness, hunger and lack of education” through community programs, according to the website.
The charity has shifted gears as multiple fires continue to burn in Los Angeles.
While Heaton once called Los Angeles home, the actress knows that moving to Nashville, Tennessee, was “the right decision” for her.
“My four sons still live in LA, and we go back and hang out and hang out,” she told Fox News Digital. “And we have a lot of friends there and we’re doing business there, but Nashville seems to be welcoming a lot of people from our industry. So I’m not the only one who has made this decision.”
Stay up-to-date with NYP’s coverage of the devastating wildfires in the LA area
“It’s filling up,” Heaton noted. “And I have a feeling that after this fire we’re going to get another large amount of … talented, creative people who have decided, you know, they’ve had enough and they’re ready to live in a beautiful place with friendly people and where they can be creative without worrying about burning down houses and raising taxes and crime and all that stuff.”
For her part, Heaton has helped friends in Los Angeles who have had to evacuate and has opened her home in Nashville to those who want to “get out” of the city.
The number of people who have lost their homes in the LA wildfires, which began on January 7 with the Palisades fire, has continued to rise. The multiple fires have destroyed thousands of homes and businesses, leaving 24 people dead so far.
Strong Santa Ana winds have been largely blamed for turning last week’s wildfires into inferno that flattened entire neighborhoods around the nation’s second-largest city, which hasn’t seen significant rainfall in more than eight months.
In less than a week, four fires have burned more than 100 square miles, roughly three times the size of Manhattan.
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