‘Devastating’: California had record rainfall last year, but lacked infrastructure to store it [Video]

California does not have a water shortage, yet firefighters battling the brutal fires across Los Angeles are facing scarce resources to keep up with the blaze that has threatened thousands of lives, homes, land and wildlife. 

Meanwhile, critics challenge Gov. Gavin Newsom’s call to “not play politics,” arguing that political mismanagement is precisely to blame.

“It’s all political,” Edward Ring, the director of water and energy policy for the California Policy Center think-tank, told Fox News Digital in an interview. “The entire cause is political, and they ironically politicize it by saying it’s about climate change, which is a political wedge that they use all the time, which is really one of the least of the factors causing this.”

Experts lay blame primarily on the state’s handling of its forestry management and a lesser-known problem, the state’s outdated water reserves system. California’s existing reservoirs can only hold so much water, and many were built in the mid-20th century. 

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