In a headline that seems tailor-made for Spencer Pratt’s insurgent mayoral campaign in Los Angeles, the New York Post reported this morning that one of his competitors, LA City Council member Nithya Raman, has proposed a “backyard BBQ ban” to combat wildfires.
But wait, critics of the Post’s reporting contend; sure, that is what Raman advocates, but her rationale is far more reasonable than the headline suggests.
What the councilwoman wants are emergency restrictions on open outdoor fires, even the contained and permitted sort, during Red Flag Warning periods when conditions are drier and windier than normal. So, what we’re really talking about is a holistic approach to fire prevention that observes an abundance of caution. That sounds pretty rational, right?
It would, if California had experienced a rash of fires — or even just one — attributable to the careless mishandling of charcoal briquettes.
In the last 20 years, most devastating wildfires in the Golden State have been attributed to lightning strikes that consume vast areas of poorly managed forest. Second to lightning strikes are fires sparked by faulty power lines and transformers — fires that achieved their scale as a result of the state’s poor forestry management. Given the extent to which Democratic public officials and Democrat-led institutions in California acknowledged that both aging infrastructure and “overcrowded forests” contributed to a number of devastating blazes, that should not be a controversial observation.
But what about human-caused blazes over the past two decades? To peruse those cases is to be even further convinced that backyard barbeques are not the problem.
The 2020 Markley Fire, in which two people died, was intentionally set by an arsonist who was trying to cover up a murder. The record-breaking 2024 Park Fire was set by an intoxicated motorist who pushed his car into some flammable brush after an accident. The devastating January 2025 Palisades Fire was first set by an embittered anti-capitalist vigilante who was “angry at the world, particularly the rich,” and who admired Luigi Mangione, the accused murderer of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
The closest we get to anything approximating the accidental sparking of significant wildfires by otherwise innocent civilians would still not be prevented by Raman’s restrictions on backyard cookouts. The 2021 Caldor fire was sparked by the discharge of a firearm, but the charges against those who started it were summarily dropped. Similarly, a 2013 wildfire in Yosemite National Park started with a hunter’s campfire – the ignition of which is already restricted in California law.
Raman’s proposal is insidious, not just because her excess caution would impose seemingly superfluous restrictions on her city’s otherwise law-abiding citizens. It’s perfidious because it’s designed to advance the notion that, even in some small measure, the city’s citizens are the problem.
And while you’re fighting among yourselves over whether Angelenos should be allowed to grill up a hot dog in their own backyards, you’re not focused on the state’s mismanagement, lethargy, corruption, and its officials’ manic hunt for scapegoats.
So, no, Raman’s proposal is neither reasonable nor prudent. It is misdirection. And it should be regarded with the contempt that, apparently, only Pratt can summon in front of a camera, but so many of his fellow Angelenos clearly share.