They’re smoking mad about his “entitlement.”
A millionaire Los Angeles CEO posted a message online offering to pay private firefighters “any amount” to protect his luxury home from the Palisades wildfire — sparking outrage over “resource” hogging as neighbors’ homes burned.
Keith Wasserman, co-founder of real estate investment company Gelt Venture Partners, posted the “tone deaf” hunt for his own private smoke eaters on X Tuesday as the rapidly-spreading blaze ripped through the area.
“Does anyone have access to private firefighters to protect our home in Pacific Palisades? Need to act fast here. All neighbors houses burning. Will pay any amount. Thank you,” he wrote.
Critics quickly got fiery over the viral tweet.
“Incredible nerve,” wrote one observer, Sam Vance. “His family is evacuated and he’s trying to hire private firefighters to risk their lives to save a home he most certainly has insured. Incredibly tone deaf.”
Other users slammed the entrepreneur for assuming he was entitled to special treatment.
“So you’re suggesting that potentially lifesaving resources (even if ‘private’) should be diverted to save your house because you’re rich while tens of thousands of people try to evacuate?” wrote a critic, who goes by Renny.
“If you find yourself tweeting for private firefighters to protect your property, you should probably question what you have become as a human being,” another commenter fumed.
Wasserman — whose post raked in more than 900,000 views — later fired back calling his critics “trolls!” and clarifying that he had already evacuated.
“Mama, I’m going viral!” he wrote — before deleting the tweet.
More than 30,000 California residents were forced to evacuate as the massive wildfire ripped through the Los Angeles area Wednesday.
In 2019, private firefighting companies began offering “on-call” wildfire protection to wealthy Californians as the number and intensity of fires increased.
The Southern California wildfires had torn through more than 15,000 acres of land Wednesday afternoon.