Los Angeles Burns: Will We Learn From Their Misspent Priorities?

This almost sounds too absurd to be real, but it is all too real.

As Los Angeles and the surrounding areas burn, these staggering numbers come to light:

In 2024, the budget for the Los Angeles Fire Department was reduced to $819,627,423. Meanwhile, the budget allocated for addressing homelessness in Los Angeles surpassed $1.3 billion.

You read that right. The city spends $500 million more on homelessness than it does protecting its citizens from fires and providing critical EMS services.

What’s worse? Nearly half of that homeless budget went unspent. It’s just sitting there, unused.

Right now, four major fires are raging in the Los Angeles area—Hurst, Eaton, Woodley, and Palisades. Firefighters are understaffed. Water resources are stretched thin. Preventative measures like clearing underbrush were neglected because funding wasn’t prioritized. And now, people are left to face the inferno.

It’s an easy shot to take at Los Angeles—and California as a whole. Somehow, incompetence has managed to turn one of the most beautiful, resource-rich, and talent-filled places on Earth into a smoldering mess of fire, homelessness, and decline.

But here’s the deal: I’m not here to just point fingers at them. Instead, I’ll take this moment to look at myself.

In many ways, I’ve made the same mistakes. Instead of prioritizing what matters most—family, faith, friends, and community—I’ve wasted time, energy, and resources on things that don’t matter. Things that, in the end, only burn to the ground. And if we’re honest, we all do this. These fires—and the misaligned priorities that led to them—are just a reflection of society’s broader failings.

California’s wildfires are likely just the beginning. Over the next few decades, disasters we can all see coming—but no one has the courage to confront—will ignite their own infernos. Social Security, healthcare, immigration, education, AI, corrupt politics, and more are ticking time bombs waiting to explode. When the checks we’ve written for decades finally come due, the pain will be immense. And let’s face it, we probably won’t rise to action until everything we’ve been leaning on collapses in flames.

It’s tempting to look at California’s chaos and think, “Thank God I don’t live there.” But fires are just one type of disaster. The rest are coming, and no one is doing a thing to stop them.

So what do you do? Learn from the flames. Prepare yourself and your family. Simplify your life. Focus on what matters most. Move to a place where you can protect your security and well-being. Build a tight-knit community of people who see what’s coming, and talk about these issues openly.

You have two choices: wait to burn, or prepare now and—at the very least—go down swinging.

Let’s go!