DEI was not "the cause" of the California wildfires, but there is some early evidence that it has contributed to the ability of the fire departments to respond to them. Too often local, federal, and state governments have focused on using public institutions to promote social policy.
If one can achieve diversity without compromising the requirements needed to do the job, then clearly women should never be discriminated against. If job requirements were designed to exclude women, they should be eliminated, but if they have been compromised to attract woman and minorities, everyone is at greater risk including the hire. Imagine an NBA basketball team putting a 5'2" white man in at center in order to achieve an internal DEI target.
A friend of mine is on lifetime disability from the LA Sheriff's Department. His partner was a physically fit, but not physically strong person, who would not have passed the previous strength requirements for the job before they were reduced.
When he and his partner were engaged by two people, he managed to incapacitate the individual he was struggling with and then save his partner, but she was seriously hurt in the encounter, and he was shot and disabled for life.
Bad things happen and my friend bears no ill will toward his ex-partner, she did the best she could. But he does think the department should not have compromised their physical demands to achieve diversity hires and lower operating costs (lowering hiring criteria can produce more applicants without raising salaries).
In the past, I have talked to retired police officers and their experiences have been confirmed by studies, that violent encounters with police increase when the person encountered feels they have a chance to win in a physical struggle.
Shootings by police officers correspond with their sense of personal danger. So, weaker officers will produce more deadly encounters to both the police and citizens. Today some police departments have compounded the risk of deadly force encounters through the hiring of weaker police officers and the lack of training. The absolute incremental number of deadly shootings is probably pretty small, but how many are too many?
If DEI goals can be realized without undermining the ability of a fire department to respond, then there is a separate issue regarding whether such programs are "fair", but you wouldn't blame DEI for contributing to the inability of the fire department to respond. So, DEI in and of itself is not to blame unless an investigation shows it influenced the Department's readiness.
Instead of trying to achieve gender or racial quotas, we should strive to make requirements gender and color blind and instead focus on hiring people who are best able to do the job. If money is not an issue, you should be able to achieve DEI targets without compromising on readiness, but budgets are always an issue, so DEI can be used as a convenient way to keep down wages.
We need to investigate every aspect of the fire and the response to it by local and state agencies. If DEI had no impact on the outcome, then that is great, if it did, then we need to make sure it does not happen again. No one person, no policy, no agency, and no institution, gets a pass, no one is presumed guilty... let's did deep and see what can be done to avoid the next wildfires from doing so much damage.
Among all the "woke" policies enacted by the governor, the mayor of LA, and the various fire departments, I am going to bet that DEI was one of the smaller things contributing to the disaster... instead my bet is water and land management policies will be on the top of the list, budget cuts to the fire departments to preserve funding for other social initiatives will be an important contributor and the states regulation of the home insurance market will have compounded the problem by having driven insurers out of the state leaving many citizens with inadequate insurance coverage.
