Fire-wrecked Los Angeles braces for a visit by President Donald Trump.
Image: JOSH EDELSON / AFP
As fire-wrecked Los Angeles braces for a visit by President Donald Trump, many are worrying the mercurial Republican will yank the federal support the city needs to get back on its feet.
Trump is due in the shell-shocked city for a few hours on Friday afternoon, where he will be able to see for himself, the devastation wrought by the deadly fires - damage whose repair will cost billions of dollars.
Former president Joe Biden was quick to pledge whatever was needed to deal with the disaster in the waning days of his administration.
But almost as soon as the fires erupted, Trump began sticking the boot in, lashing out at California Governor Gavin Newsom, and resurrecting an earlier hobbyhorse about water supplies.
"I don't think we should give California anything until they let the water run down," Trump said this week, emphasising his false belief that there is a valve in northern California that can be turned to release billions of gallons (liters) of water in the rain-starved state.
Threats to withhold federal funds are worrisome to some of those who lost everything in the fires.
"I just can't fathom that the government is going to let so many people (suffer)... that they're not going to help them," Sebastian Harrison told AFP.
This 59-year-old former actor lost his Malibu home in the blaze. He was not insured, unable to afford premiums that topped $40,000 a year.
Without government money, getting his life back on track might prove almost impossible, he fears.
In Altadena, a modest city further inland, as in the upscale Pacific Palisades, thousands of ruined buildings need to be cleared.
Federal cash granted by Biden for 180 days is intended to cover this.
But local authorities fret the White House's new inhabitant might not honor that check.
"Everybody's rushing to make sure the funds get here before Trump gets in office," a local official told AFP last week, on condition of anonymity.
But, the person said, the demography of the disaster - which affected some very wealthy people as well as those of more modest means - gives hope that Trump won't be able to abandon the region.
"Trump may think of Altadena as a bunch of low-life Democrats, but Pacific Palisades is a different story," the source said.
"That's the first zip code where he and other Republicans go to when they want to raise money in Los Angeles."
Pacific Palisades and the parts of Malibu it abuts are considerably less left leaning than other parts of Los Angeles.
While the area has its share of Hollywood liberals, it also has property developers, businesspeople and other Republicans.
Among those who lost their homes was Mel Gibson, who Trump has just appointed to an ill-defined role as ambassador to Hollywood.
The new president's visit to Los Angeles looks set to include a meeting with the state's governor - whom Trump delights in calling Gavin "Newscum."
There is no love lost between the two men, but Newsom has taken a more conciliatory approach in recent weeks.
"Historically, federal disaster aid has been provided without conditions, recognising that political calculations or regional divides should not encumber relief efforts," he wrote in a letter last week to Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson.
"This principle of unity is at the heart of our nation's resilience."
But if the federal government cannot be cajoled into stumping up the funds needed for recovery and reconstruction, California says it is prepared to use the courts.
The state's attorney general, Rob Bonta, said he found it "disheartening" that Trump and his allies were seeking to politicise tragedy.
"We have every expectation that federal action will be taken to support California and the hardworking Californians whose lives and livelihoods are at risk," he told AFP.
"We have been preparing for the Trump administration for months, and we will not hesitate to act if we believe the president is violating the law."
AFP