Patricia Heton blasted California’s leadership, claiming officials “dropped the ball” on the response to the Los Angeles fires.
Heaton, who works with LA Dream Center to help residents in need, said city leaders were unprepared and wondered where taxpayer money had gone in an interview with Fox News Digital.
The star of ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ called for change after the ‘very hard lesson’.
CALIFORNIA FIRES: ESSENTIAL TELEPHONE NUMBERS FOR LOS ANGELES RESIDENTS AND HOW TO HELP THEM
Patricia Heaton criticized the government’s response to the Los Angeles fires. (Getty Images)
Heaton explained that Los Angeles seemed unprepared for the fires, which started burning on January 7 Pacific Palisades Neighborhood. Since then, multiple fires have burned in various parts of the star-studded city, destroying thousands of homes and businesses. The actress emphasized the need for forest management and reservoirs that are actually filled with water.
“I know some officials said, ‘Well, the system was overwhelmed.’ Well, in the event of a massive fire, of course it’s going to be overwhelmed,” she told Fox News Digital. “You should have known that and been prepared for that. So I think there’s a lot of money being spent in LA and we’re not can find out where things are going.’
WATCH: ACTRESS PATRICIA HEATON SAYS WE ‘CANNOT TRUST THE GOVERNMENT’ AFTER LA FIRES DESTROYS THE CITY
Heaton emphasized that California residents “can’t just rely on the government to take care of things.”
“It’s people coming together in your community and insisting that things get done. And unfortunately, this is a very, very, very hard lesson.”
“But I think that’s what it’s going to take to take that bureaucracy apart and get the things done that government should be doing, which is taking care of the infrastructure first and foremost,” Heaton said.
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Patricia Heaton moved from Hollywood to Nashville. (Getty Images)
Heaton has teamed up with LA Dream Center to help with disaster relief efforts, and she’s not alone. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Kathie Lee Gifford and Chris Pratt have all donated items or money to the charity helping those affected by the Los Angeles fires.
“They’ve taken action. They’ve shown up. We’ve had advocacy,” LA Dream Center founder Matthew Barnett told Fox News Digital about the celebrity support. “We’ve had people like Snoop Dog recently — like I’ve never met in my entire life — but he made an Instagram post for a minute and a half of all me talking.”
Matthew Barnett, founder of LA Dream Center, told Fox News Digital that Dwayne Johnson, Kathie Lee Gifford and Chris Pratt have all donated to LA Dream Center to help with firefighting efforts. (Karwai Tang/WireImage | Getty Images)
WATCH: DWAYNE ‘THE ROCK’ JOHNSON, SNOOP DOGG HELP LA DREAM CENTER DURING FIRE
The LA Dream Center According to its website, it typically acts as a resource center that focuses “on providing support to people affected by homelessness, hunger and lack of education” through community programs.
The charity has made the transition as multiple fires continue to burn in Los Angeles.
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Patricia Heaton is known for her role in the TV sitcom ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’. (Richard Hartog/Los Angeles Times)
While Heaton once called Los Angeles home, the actress knows that moving to Nashville, Tennessee was the “right decision” for her.
“My four sons still live in LA, and we go back to hang out and have meetings,” she told Fox News Digital. “And we have a lot of friends there and we do business there, but Nashville seems to welcome a lot of people from our industry, so I’m not the only one who made this decision.”
“It’s getting full,” Heaton noted. “And I have a feeling that after this fire, we’re going to get a huge amount of talented, creative people who have decided, you know, they’ve had enough and are ready to go live in a beautiful place with friendly people and where they can be creative without worrying about houses burning down, taxes going up, crime and all that stuff.”
For her part, Heaton has helped friends in Los Angeles who had to evacuate and opened her home in Nashville to people wanting to leave the city.
A person walks through the destruction left by the Palisades Fire in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles on January 9. (AP/Jae C. Hong)
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On January 8, a house burns down in the Eaton Fire in Altadena. (AP Photo/Nic Coury)
The number of people who have lost their homes due to… LA burnsthat started with the Palisades Fire on January 7, has continued to rise. The multiple fires have destroyed thousands of homes and businesses, killing 24 people so far.
The fierce Santa Ana winds are largely responsible for turning last week’s wildfires into infernos that leveled entire neighborhoods around the country’s second-largest city, where there has been no significant rainfall for more than eight months fallen.
In less than a week, four fires have burned more than 100 square miles, about three times the size of Manhattan.
An air tanker loses retardant during work to control the Eaton fire in Altadena on January 13. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)
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The Associated Press contributed to this report.
