Patricia Heaton criticized California’s leadership, claiming officials “dropped the ball” on the response to the Los Angeles fires.
Heaton, who teamed up with the Los Angeles Dream Center to help residents in need, said city leaders were not prepared and questioned where taxpayer money went in an interview with Fox News Digital.
The “Everybody Loves Raymond” star called for change after the “very tough lesson.”
Heaton explained that Los Angeles does not appear prepared to confront the fires that began burning on January 7 in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood. Since then, multiple fires have broken out in different areas of the star-studded city, destroying thousands of homes and businesses. The actress stressed the need to manage forests and actually fill reservoirs with water.
“I know some officials were saying, ‘Well, the system has been overwhelmed.’ Well, in the event of a huge fire, of course it will be overwhelmed,” she told Fox News Digital. “You have to know that and be prepared for that. “So, I think there’s a lot of money being spent in Los Angeles that we can’t figure out where it’s going to go.”
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. Unfortunately, that’s a very, very, very harsh lesson.”
“But I think this is what it takes to break down that bureaucracy and get the things done that government is supposed to do, which is take care of infrastructure first and foremost,” Heaton said.
Heaton works with the LA Dream Center to help with disaster relief efforts, and she’s not the only one. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Kathie Lee Gifford and Chris Pratt donated items or money to the charity that works to help those affected by the Los Angeles fires.
“They stepped up. They showed up. “We were invited,” Matthew Barnett, founder of LA Dream Center, told Fox News Digital of the celebrity endorsement. “We had people like Snoop Dog that day — like I’d never met them in my entire life — but he He spent a whole minute and a half, like an Instagram post, just me talking.”
The LA Dream Center typically operates 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 switched destinations as multiple fires continue to burn in Los Angeles.
While Heaton once called Los Angeles her home, the actress knows that moving to Nashville, Tennessee was the “right decision” for her.
“My four kids still live in Los Angeles, and we’re back to hanging out and having meetings,” she told Fox News Digital. “And we have a lot of friends there and we do business there, but Nashville seems to welcome a lot of people from our industry. So I’m not the only one who made this decision.”
Stay up to date with NYP’s coverage of terrifying fires in the Los Angeles area
“It’s filling up,” Heaton noted. “And I have a feeling after this fire we’re going to get another slew of … talented, creative people who decide, you know, they’ve had enough and they’re ready to live in a nice place with friendly people wherever they are.” They can be creative without worrying about houses burning down and high taxes and crime and all that stuff.
For her part, Heaton helped her friends in Los Angeles who had to evacuate and opened her home in Nashville to those looking to “get out” of the city.
The number of people who lost their homes due to the Los Angeles fires, which began on January 7 with the Palisades Fire, has continued to rise. Multiple fires have destroyed thousands of homes and businesses, killing 24 people so far.
Blistering Santa Ana winds were largely blamed for turning last week’s wildfires into infernos that destroyed entire neighborhoods around the country’s second-largest city, where no significant rain has fallen in more than eight months.
In less than a week, four fires have burned more than 62 square miles (160 square kilometers), nearly three times the size of Manhattan.
