Patricia Heaton says Los Angeles fires show ‘we can’t just trust the government’

Patricia Heaton sharply criticized California leaders, claiming that officials “dropped the ball” regarding the response to the Los Angeles fires.

Heaton, who has partnered with the LA Dream Center to help residents in need, said city leaders were unprepared and questioned where taxpayer money had gone in an interview with Fox News Digital.

The star of “Everybody Loves Raymond” He asked for a change after the “very hard lesson.”

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Patricia Heaton criticized the government’s response to the Los Angeles fires. (Getty Images)

Heaton explained that Los Angeles did not seem prepared for the fires, which began burning on January 7 in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood. Since then, multiple fires have broken out in different areas of the star-studded city, destroying thousands of homes and businesses. The actress highlighted the need for forest management and reservoirs really full of water.

“I know some of the officials were saying, ‘Well, the system was overwhelmed.’ Well, in the event of a big fire, of course it will be overwhelmed,” he told Fox News Digital. “You should have known about it and been prepared for it. So I think there’s a lot of money being spent in Los Angeles and we can’t determine where it’s going to go.”

WATCH: ACTRESS PATRICIA HEATON SAYS ‘WE CAN’T TRUST THE GOVERNMENT’ AFTER FIRES DESTROY THE CITY

Heaton insisted that California residents “can’t just rely on the government to take care of things.”

“These are people who come together in your community and insist on getting things done. And, unfortunately, this is a very, very, very hard lesson.”

“But I guess that’s what it takes to break through that bureaucracy and do the things that government is supposed to do, which is take care of the infrastructure first and foremost,” Heaton said.

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Patricia Heaton moved from Hollywood to Nashville. (Getty Images)

Heaton is working with the LA Dream Center to help with disaster relief efforts, and she’s not the only one. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Kathie Lee Gifford and Chris Pratt have donated needed items or money to the charity working to help those affected by the Los Angeles fires.

“They’ve stepped up. They’ve shown up. We’ve had advocacy,” Matthew Barnett, founder of the LA Dream Center, told Fox News Digital of the celebrity support. “We had people like Snoop Dog the other day, like I’ve never met them in my entire life, but he made a minute and a half post on Instagram where I was just talking.”

Matthew Barnett, founder of the LA Dream Center, told Fox News Digital that Dwayne Johnson, Kathie Lee Gifford and Chris Pratt have donated to the LA Dream Center to help with fire relief efforts. (Karwai Tang/WireImage | Getty Images)

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The Los Angeles Dream Center It typically serves as a resource center focused “on providing support to those affected by homelessness, hunger and lack of education” through community programs, according to the website.

The charity has changed course as multiple fires continue to burn in Los Angeles.

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Patricia Heaton is known for her role in the television comedy “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 kids still live in Los Angeles and we come back to hang out and have get-togethers,” he told Fox News Digital. “And we have a lot of friends there and we’re doing 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 filling up,” Heaton noted. “And I have a feeling that after this fire we’re going to have another large number… of talented, creative people who have decided, you know, that they’ve had enough and are ready to 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.”

For his part, Heaton has helped friends in Los Angeles who had to evacuate and opened his home in Nashville to those looking to “get out” of the city.

A person walks through the destruction left behind by the Palisades Fire in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles on January 9. (AP/Jae C. Hong)

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A house burns in the Eaton Fire in Altadena on January 8. (AP Photo/Nic Coury)

The number of people who have lost their homes due to the Fires in Los Angeleswhich began on January 7 with the Palisades Fire, has continued to increase. The multiple fires have destroyed thousands of homes and businesses, leaving 24 dead so far.

Fierce Santa Ana winds have been largely blamed 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 rain in more than eight months.

In less than a week, four fires have ignited more than 160 square kilometers (62 square miles), about three times the size of Manhattan.

A tanker dumps retardant while working to contain the Eaton Fire in Altadena on Jan. 13. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.