It’s easy to blame California’s Democrats for the devastating fires that killed at least five people and destroyed more than 5,000 homes in Los Angeles.

It’s the Democrats in charge of California who have been tearing down dams to protect fish and please environmentalists instead of making sure Los Angeles is sent enough water from the northern part of the state.

It’s the Democrats running Los Angeles who have not been clearing the volatile grass and brush that has built up on the mountainsides east of the city and who have canceled the controlled burns that can prevent wildfires from spreading.

And then there’s the super-inept mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, who had to rush back to her burning city from a junket to Ghana, where she was attending the inauguration of its new president. Bass recently cut $17 million from the city’s fire department budget.

And just last month she ignored a warning from her fire chief Kristin Crowley that turned out to be tragically prophetic – Crowley said her department had “severely limited capacity to prepare for, train for and respond to large-scale emergencies, including wildfires.”

But let’s be honest.

We can blame Gov. Gavin Newsom, the Democratically controlled state legislature in Sacramento and Bass for being unprepared to protect the city from a natural disaster many people knew was bound to come someday. But the prime villain is Mother Nature.

Even if all the Democrats in California suddenly became competent, and even if all the storage tanks and fire hydrants in Los Angeles had been filled to the top with water, Mother Nature’s destructive rampage was not going to be stopped. The Santa Ana winds were historic – sometimes hitting 100 miles per hour. The flying embers couldn’t be contained by all the fire trucks in the world.

Plus, the first two days of the hurricane-force winds prevented helicopters and planes from dropping water on the fires. Air support helped to put out the flames in the Hollywood Hills by using Lake Hollywood, a five minute flight from the fires. but it came two nights too late for the people of Pacific Palisades – my father’s old neighborhood.

Until 1980, my father lived in Pacific Palisades. I know the neighborhood well, and it was especially sad to watch it being decimated overnight by Mother Nature. I don’t know yet if my father’s old house survived, but damage to Pacific Palisades alone has been estimated at $10 billion. The total cost of the burning of Los Angeles is already pegged at over $50 billion. But the damage to the hearts and souls of those whose lives have been turned upside down forever has no pricetag.

The catastrophe in Los Angeles was the result of a perfect storm – historic winds on top of decades of radical environmental policies, wasteful spending and incompetent leadership. Mother Nature can’t be sent the bill. In a just world, however, the Democrats in charge of California should have to pay a steep political price for their continued mismanagement.

Unfortunately, they won’t. Democrats have had near total control of state government in California for almost 40 years. California needs to start electing people who are going to make a radical change. But the Republican Party barely exists, and I can’t think of any conservative who can save my once-great state from the foolish ineptitude of the “progressive” Democrats.

Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. Send comments to reagan@caglecartoons.com and follow @reaganworld on Twitter.