Fires raging in California consuming thousands of acres, homes, and businesses are bringing to the forefront yet another grim reality for American society.

Billionaire Rick Caruso, a former mayoral candidate in Los Angeles and recently appointed commissioner overseeing the state’s water resources, has highlighted yet another troubling issue facing American society, all while criticizing the current mayor and the state’s governor.

Rick Caruso, speaking to an American media outlet, stressed that he hired private firefighters whom he put on standby outside a mall he owns in the Palisades area, which has been more than 75 percent destroyed by the fires in California. Caruso stressed in his statement that “thanks to the efforts of these men, adjacent homes were also saved”.

The wave of agitation that flooded social media immediately after Caruso’s statements was enormous, and immediately the American media, as well as media from across the Atlantic, began “digging” into both the ashes of the homes in California and local laws regarding whether the real estate mogul’s move was legal.

Private firefighting companies

The truth is that in the United States today there are more than 300 private companies dedicated to firefighting. These companies mainly enter into bilateral contracts with the largest insurance companies in the country and undertake both guarding and extinguishing fires in companies such as refineries, fuel storage areas, and also flammable materials and armaments manufacturing plants.

In 2018, the state of California, realizing the ever-increasing demand for even private firefighting companies from the multi-millionaire citizens of the areas, who have now lost their homes and businesses, created a clear legal framework, to both clarify the duties and responsibilities of private parties and to set limits on private parties in times of crisis, such as the one California has been experiencing for more than seven days now.

California’s legal framework states that private citizens shall in no way operate alongside state or military firefighters, shall not interfere with communications, shall not obstruct their work, and most importantly in no way exploit public – in this case state – water resources. Private firefighting companies in the US at the federal, not just local, level are required to ensure that at the point at which they are called upon by their customers to operate they allocate the necessary water resources.

In the Caruso case, which has also brought widespread outcry, the businessman appears to have spent, based on what has been leaked to the American press, more than $2,000 per hour operating to save his shopping center, but this is not illegal as long as he is subpoenaed and can prove that the company he hired did not use local water resources.

Both the state governor and the mayor of Los Angeles, who are under massive fire from residents for the way they prepared for the crisis and the way they are currently managing it, have announced that they will file a lawsuit against Caruso who will be asked, as will the private company he hired, to prove in court the legality of the firefighting practices they used in Palisades.