Former Biggest Loser trainer Jillian Michaels is ‘personally outraged’ by the wildfires currently ravaging Los Angeles – and has a bone to pick with California’s government.
Apocalyptic fires tore through the ritzy enclave of Pacific Palisades on Tuesday, rapidly spreading to surrounding suburbs as a windstorm carried embers and debris in all directions.
Many celebrity homes have been destroyed and completely torched to the ground – among them were those of Leighton Meester and Adam Brody, Paris Hilton, Melissa Rivers and Miles Teller.
On Wednesday night, another fire broke out in the Hollywood Hills area, making the total number of wildfires in Los Angeles five.
Currently, there is the Palisades Fire, the Eaton Fire, the Hurst Fire, the Lidia Fire, and the Sunset Fire.
The death toll of the historic infernos has now reached five, as heroic firefighters continue to battle hellish conditions on the front lines.
Michaels, who lost her Malibu, California home in the 2018 Woolsey fire, considers herself and her family ‘lucky’ as they ‘didn’t lose everything’ – but it’s something that still had a profound impact on her two children, she said.
And now, with a number of wildfires raging through Los Angeles, she had some choice words for the state’s current leadership, including Governor Gavin Newsom, which she told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview Wednesday.
‘People are dead, homes have burned, it is not your first rodeo,’ she told DailyMail.com. ‘It is not.’
‘And when you know that you have a state that is prone to fire and – I’m going to give it to you – you’ve got global warning, you have literally have a tinderbox,’ the Balance by Jillian Michaels founder continued.
‘Isn’t this the part where you take the highest taxed, highest income tax, highest sales tax, highest gas tax and rebuild the infrastructure?’
She is especially not a fan of California’s Governor Gavin Newsom and the way he has been handling the wildfire outbreak.
He has been the state’s Governor since 2019.
The fitness celebrity went on to claim that Newsom had known about the fires since early this week, when he began to mobilize certain resources to the area, but failed to take enough action.
She believes that he should have called in the National Guard to help battle these fires much earlier.
‘I’m sorry, and the reason for me this is super serious is because this guy wants to be your president. This now goes from a California problem to a country-wide problem,’ Michaels said about Newsom.
‘Just look at it, look at it with your own eyes,’ the Keeping It Real podcast host continued.
‘I am uniquely acquainted with it. I have been through it.’
During the interview, she also admitted that she believes California should be doing ‘controlled burns,’ something that she says has been done elsewhere for years.
Per National Geographic, controlled burns are ‘setting planned fires to maintain the health of a forest,’ which can be set when there will not be a threat to the public.
The right weather conditions are essential for a controlled burn to ensure that it won’t spread.
Michaels also hit back against environmental activists who didn’t believe in these prescribed burns.
In October, the U.S. Forest Service put a pause on prescribed burns on federal land, per the San Francisco Chronicle.
‘How many mountain lions? How many coyotes?’ Michaels wondered.
‘We’re all seeing pictures of baby deer running down burning roads, tell me, how is that working out for the environment now?’
The fire that burned down Michaels’ house in 2018 was ‘sparked by utility equipment in fierce winds,’ per CNN, as a ‘guy wire on a steel pole with an energized conductor’ caused heated material to fall on an area of vegetation, which started the fires.
On Wednesday, the certified nutritionist also took to X to share her thoughts, calling it ‘pure incompetence.’
‘I’m so so upset for the people of California,’ she wrote, in part.
‘My family who stayed. My lifelong friends who live there. Our brave firefighters. This is not a partisan issue it’s pure incompetence and misprioritization.’
