With the wildfires in the Los Angeles area still raging, a new exclusive report from the UK's Daily Mail's Perkin Amalaraj reveals that the Los Angeles Fire Department has, for some time, been literally begging the city council for funding to replace aging equipment and hire new maintenance staff. Those pleas went unanswered, and now we see the results. //

Here's the part I find baffling: My son-in-law, a paramedic and volunteer firefighter for a small Iowa county of about 12,000 people — the kid is basically Captain America — reports that his little, mostly rural county has just funded the purchase of replacements for one of their three modern fire trucks and all three of their ambulances. Between the county seat's town council and the county, he assures me that the emergency services departments are a high priority and get what they need.

Would that Los Angeles had their priorities so properly in order.