Dean Cain, who grew up in Malibu, California, told Fox News Digital that all of the homes he once lived in there, and in nearby Pacific Palisades, have been destroyed during this week’s Los Angeles-area wildfires.
“I ended up having three different houses in Pacific Palisades, one that I owned, two that I rented and lived in,” Cain said. “The three of those Pacific Palisades’ [homes], all of those burned, gone. Pacific Palisades looks like someone dropped a nuclear weapon on top of it and just flattened everything. I’ve never seen anything like that. Also, three of the houses that I lived in in Malibu are gone.”
The “Lois & Clark” star called the devastation “shocking and horrific, but not unexpected. It’s part of the reason I left California was this perfect storm of mismanagement and a failure of leadership.”
Cain said that when the Woolsey Fire hit in 2018, it burned his backyard but not his house.
“We’re used to this in Malibu,” he explained. “We get the wind, we get the fire, so we know how to deal with it. But when you have all the… tools taken away from you, no money, no brush clearance, no controlled burns, all of those things, you end up with a catastrophic situation like this.”
Cain said that although his house survived the Woolsey Fire, his fire insurance was canceled afterward, adding that was part of the reason he left California for Henderson, Nevada, in 2018.
“There’s so many of us that have been shouting from the rooftops, including President Trump, numerous times, way back in the day during his first presidency,” he continued. “He’s been saying it, mismanagement is going to cost you. Removing money from the fire budget is going to cost you. Not controlled burning is going to cost you. Failure to reservoir the water, it’s going to cost you.”
Cain placed the blame squarely on Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.
“You screwed up, Gavin Newsom. You screwed up,” he said. “There was plenty of water. Last year was record rainfall or the year before, record rainfall. Snowmelt, reservoir the water.”
Cain said his water bill was in the thousands per month when he lived in Malibu, and he couldn’t get fire insurance for less than approximately $40,000 a year.
His son helped him realize that he should leave the state by reminding him that he keeps “complaining about the tax policy, the lack of common-sense policies. Why are we living there?”
Stay up to date with the NYP’s coverage of the terrifying LA-area fires
“I was like, ‘Why are we here? What am I doing?’” he said. “And it was weird to leave my home forever, but to come here now [Henderson, Nevada] and to be in this gorgeous home with great policies, you know, castle doctrine, ‘stand your ground’ stuff and things like that, I’m like, ‘Wait a minute, this makes perfect sense.’ And then to watch the disaster unfold, I’m horrified. My heart is broken for the people who are suffering at the hands of this mismanagement. But I’m hoping that that will teach them about common sense.”
He added that “good times create weak men and weak men create hard times.”
“Weak policy creates hard times. We’re now in hard times. We need to have strong men so we can create good times again. That’s the way it is. Strong men and women, sound policy. Everybody’s going to be in a better position,” said Cain.
Cain went on to say that he believes liberal people in Hollywood have usually “voted for all these things that really don’t affect” them, “but when it does affect you — you can’t get a permit to rebuild or your house burns down or people loot your home afterwards — suddenly you love the police, you love the firefighters, you love people that you’ve been denigrating for years. You want common sense policy.”
“So once it affects you, your votes change,” he said. “And I think this is going to turn a very, very blue state, much more red. I’m hoping California becomes purple and I’m hoping that — listen, my heart goes out to those who have lost everything. And I know they’re going to go through years and years of red tape, nightmare, memories gone. It’s going to be one of those catastrophic events in their lives. And I hope that this will wake up people so they’ll start voting for policies that make sense, common sense, and they’ll prepare for this sort of thing in the future.”
Because he lives in the desert, Cain said he has enough food in his car to last for several days and that he and his son have satellite radios in addition to their cellphones to communicate with each other.
“Not that I’m a survivalist or a prepper, because it’s common sense,” he said.
But, Cain said, “when you see a tragedy of this magnitude, you see how amazing the American people are, and they come together.”
“And there’s been an outpouring of support, food, water, necessities,” he added. “We are the most giving nation in the history of mankind. We will continue to be, you know, as fractured as we can be, [but] there are times in natural disasters, in war and things of that nature, where in the United States people come together. And it’s wonderful to see that happening. It’s going to be a very long, tough road.”
Cain noted that with the nature of the national news cycle, the wildfire devastation would be replaced by more recent news within a few weeks, “but all of these people’s lives are turned upside down.”
“I cannot fathom the scale of what’s happened to the Palisades,” he continued. “It’s stunning to me. Palisades High School, gone. I mean, football games. I played at Palisades High School. Dozens… It’s gone. It’s just gone. Like so much of my childhood is gone. I moved away because of the terrible policies. It’s just heartbreaking to see it happen. I don’t want to say I told you so, but I told you so.”
Cain said his mother, who is with him in Nevada, can’t stop crying watching the devastation.
“The house they built from the ground up… is gone to the ground,” he said, adding, “my mom’s been crying for two days.”
Cain added that he feels leaving Malibu for Henderson is “one of the smartest things I’ve ever done.”
“I feel like I’ve been freed,” he said. “Just so many people are just going to be like, you got out just in time. And I did. And because I was blessed to have the means and I had a son, my son Christopher was like, ‘Dad, let’s go.’ And life is so much easier here and so much better. Beautiful neighborhoods and much more value for your dollar… super low taxes in comparison to California, super low regulations in comparison to California. Smarter policy… we’re in the middle of the desert here in Nevada. We have better water rights, and the water is, they say it’s expensive here. It’s cheaper for me to get water here than it was in California… So absolutely [the] right move by me.”
