As firefighters continue to bravely take on the Los Angeles wildfires, Denis Leary offered some clarification about the systemic issues they face when it comes to budgets on Wednesday morning. According to the actor, fire departments are always the first targeted in budget cuts, because they will always go out and help people, no matter what.
Leary explained this during his appearance on “The View,” as he has firsthand experiencing it thanks to his Leary Firefighters Foundation, which he founded back in 2000. According to the actor, in the last 25 years, his foundation has seen nothing but increased requests for funding.
“Every year, the request for money from departments around the country — big and small, big city, small town — from my foundation, we get, I can’t even tell you, hundreds of requests, and we get more every year,” he told the ABC hosts.
And he had a pretty clear idea as to why.
“The reason is, is because everywhere — LA, New York, tiny little towns all over America — when it comes to cutting the budget, they cut the fire department because they don’t go on strike,” he said.
“So, if you cut the sanitation department, the garbage piles up, people complain,” Leary continued. “If you cut the teachers, they go on strike, and then people complain ‘My kids are stuck at home, get ’em out of here.’ Right? The fire department is very easy to cut because they still go and save people. They put out fires.”
Leary also debunked the idea that the Los Angeles wildfires could’ve been put out quickly with more water from hydrants.
“Listen, this is coming from a firefighter point of view, it doesn’t matter if the hydrants worked or not,” he said. “That fire — 100 mile per hour winds, it was a hurricane of fire. There’s not enough water in the ocean to put that out, OK? So, forget about that issue.”
“The View” airs weekdays at 11 a.m. ET on ABC.
