Surfer Tim for Mayor of LA!

How he would have tackled wildfires differently than Karen Bass

If someone asked you what causes crime, what would you say?

Some people point to poverty, others to culture, bigotry, drugs, peer pressure, and so on.

Yet when crime threatens their front door, they don’t try to solve poverty or fix the culture. When there’s a direct threat, they seek out direct solutions: They lock their doors, install a home security system, get a dog, a gun, and so on. Often a threat’s macro cause doesn’t tell us much about what our micro response should be.

Some argue that climate change caused the wildfires that have ripped through Los Angeles. Others disagree. Still others say government incompetence exacerbates the more dangerous conditions created by climate change. But let’s not let the excruciating climate change debate prevent us from seeking out direct solutions to direct threats.

What do we see when disasters strike around the world?

Two massive hurricanes of equal intensity can strike two different places and the aftermath will look very different. Thanks to better warning systems, building practices, infrastructure and so on, a rich area will likely suffer far less than a poor area. We’ve also seen that it’s not wealth alone that saves lives and reduces suffering, it’s government competence. And when governments flail, the rest of us must fill the competency void. In other words, what matters most isn’t what causes a natural disaster, but how people respond to it.

Wildfires could be created by nature, man, or space aliens, but the cause shouldn’t affect how we respond when flames approach our neighborhoods.

Direct Threat, Direct Response

Robert Kerbeck watched as a truck with a surfboard on top pulled up next to his neighbor’s garage sale. It was the year 2000 and Kerbeck had recently moved to Malibu and learned to surf, so he headed next door to ask this local about surf conditions.

Surfer Tim was happy to pass on his local knowledge to Kerbeck, and before he drove off Tim looked at Kerbeck’s all-wood Victorian home and said something the new Angelino would never forget: “You know you’re going to have to fight a wildfire one day to save this house.”

Eighteen years later, the massive Woolsey Fire struck Kerbeck’s neighborhood. The blaze consumed nearly every house on his block, yet Kerbeck’s home survived. And it survived thanks to surfer Tim. Kerbeck had taken his advice and sprayed his home with a flame retardant similar to what firefighters drop from planes.

Surfer Tim for Mayor

Imagine if surfer Tim had been elected mayor of Los Angeles in 2022 instead of Karen Bass.

He probably wouldn’t have shared his secret surf spots, but you can bet he’d give Angelinos the same advice he gave Kerbeck. He might have even deployed city workers into high risk areas to spray in advance of the flames.

Today other Angelinos have adopted the spirit of surfer Tim. Like Kerbeck’s home, their homes have survived even as their neighbors’ houses went up in flames. Consider Army vet Jim Cragg. He saved his home with fire retardant and a low-tech DIY sprinkler system he placed on his roof.

My family and I escaped from LA in 2018, but we still live in a fire-prone part of SoCal. I admit, I’ve gotten a little obsessed with fire retardant over the past week. But can you blame me? I mean, check out this demonstration where brush stops burning once it encounters fire retardant. It’s like this miracle home-saving potion has existed all along but it receives far less attention than it should.

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Why Not Spray More?

Again, I am new to this obsession, so maybe I’m overlooking giant swaths of fire retardant fandom among LA’s leadership. But after living in LA for 15 years, I doubt it.

Or maybe fire retardant isn’t the miracle potion I imagine it to be. Of course, no solution is fail safe. On the other hand, we must think in terms of probabilities. And it seems pretty clear that the probability that your home will survive a blaze if it’s slathered in fire retardant is much greater than if it isn’t.

So why doesn’t LA have a “spray, baby, spray” mentality?

I’m too early in my retardant obsession to deliver any verdicts, but I bet environmental concerns have something to do with it. But at least some retardant producers tout their products’ safety, and California’s history of environmental cost-benefit analysis shouldn’t pack residents full of confidence. The state’s $310 billion high-speed rail boondoggle represents just one Rube Goldberg contraption that officials have backed to address climate change.

And those who truly care about the environment should want to avoid wildfires that devour millions of acres of trees and animals and belch out billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide.

Might cost play a role in retardant hesitancy?

Well, few accuse Golden State politicians of being frugal, and Governor Gavin Newsom is eager to spend big on proposals that would have approximately zero impact on wildfires or temperatures including $36 million for “sequestering carbon and reducing emissions” from ranches and farms and $228 million for port upgrades to support offshore wind generation.

Of course, direct responses aren’t all about fire retardant spray. They also include clearing brush, providing firefighters with ample water supplies, and ensuring that the roadway system allows for the speedy evacuation of residents and arrival of emergency vehicles. (It took more than 25 minutes for the first fire truck to reach the Pacific Palisades fire.)

And as surfer Tim and Jim Cragg demonstrated, direct responses aren’t all about government response. By now, my fellow Californians must realize that many of their elected officials are far better at grandstanding than saving homes. We must expect political incompetence, and act accordingly. We must defend and build our homes differently. David Steiner’s “miracle home” survived the recent blazes and he attributes the success to the home’s built-in resilience—it was constructed with stucco, stone, and a fireproof roof.

But there’s another reason why California officials so often avoid direct solutions to direct threats—groupthink. I spent part of my time in LA in the think tank world analyzing urban policy, and what was striking was how so many so-called leaders get boxed in by herd thinking. Those who ascend to the top in politics are rarely heterodox thinkers. They nab the top spots in government because they learned how to become creatures of the system.

Imagine if California’s state and local governments broke free from herd thinking. Imagine if they tossed in some dissidents. Imagine what a sprinkling of surfer Tims might do.