Spencer Pratt, the reality TV alum, was greeted by thunderous applause as he announced he is running for Mayor of Los Angeles at a Palisades protest on the one year anniversary of the deadly blaze.
The bombshell came during a high-octane “They Let Us Burn!” protest Wednesday. Pratt’s home was among the thousands destroyed in the fires one year ago.
The reality TV alum said he’s “done waiting for someone to take real action.” Jamie Paige/NY Post
Standing amidst the charred remains of the neighborhood he once called home, Pratt sported a black t-shirt that read “Pacific Palisades” on the front. Pratt’s wife, Heidi Montag, told The Post she was extremely proud of her husband.
“The system in Los Angeles isn’t struggling, it’s fundamentally broken,” Pratt told a cheering crowd. “It is a machine designed to protect the people at the top and the friends they exchange favors with while the rest of us drown in toxic smoke and ash. Business as usual is a death sentence for Los Angeles, and I’m done waiting for someone to take real action. That’s why I am running for mayor. And let me be clear, this just isn’t a campaign, this is a mission, and we’re gonna expose the system.”
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“They intentionally let us burn before, during and after,” Heidi Montag told The Post. “There was no accountability. It was gross negligence. They let this happen. It wasn’t a natural disaster or something that was unavoidable. It was their fault, and we need the accountability we deserve.”
In a teary and visceral speech in front of hundreds, Pratt said the most heartbreaking thing was “the realization that all of this was preventable.”
An emotional Heidi Montag speaks to the crowd at the “They Let Us Burn” protest in Pacific Palisades.
The bombshell came during a high-octane “They Let Us Burn!” protest Wednesday. London Entertainment for NY Post
An extremely vocal critic of the state’s leaders, in the last year Pratt has emerged as the face of a fire accountability movement, leveraging his millions of followers on social media to blast what he has called criminal negligence.
“Gavin Newsom and the state of California let brush grow wild in Topanga State Park for 50 years with no prescribed burns and no wildfire maintenance,” Pratt said. “Gavin Newsom and the state of California created an insurance market so hostile that every major carrier stopped writing policies and dropped our families and our neighbors just before the sparks flew here in the Palisades.”
Pratt called out Janisse Quiñones, the CEO and Chief Engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power for leaving “our reservoirs empty despite collecting a salary of $750,000 per year.”
“And while our lives were literally burning to the ground, Mayor Karen Bass was in Ghana,” Pratt added.
“I used to think my taxpayer dollars funded a functional city and a state government whose infrastructure and essential services would be there when I needed them, but I was completely naive,” Pratt said. Now, he’s running for office to do something about it, and the victims of the Palisades fire are cheering him on in support.