LA Firefighters Had to Be ORDERED Off the Lachman Fire – They Said It Wasn’t Out and It Wasn’t

This is a serious wrinkle developing here, not only to dump more incredulous scorn on the leaders of the Los Angeles fire department at the time of the devastating wildfires last January, but it’s going to raise hell with Gavin Newsom’s plans to wriggle out from underneath state culpability for the inferno that swept through the hillsides surrounding the city.

At the beginning of this month, a 29-year-old former Uber driver named Jonathan Rinderknecht was arrested in Florida and charged with deliberately starting a fire in the hills of Pacific Palisades above Los Angeles on New Year’s Day, 2024. It was dubbed ‘The Lachman Fire’, and part of the evidence against Rinderknecht includes phone GPS tagging him at the scene, 911 calls from the area, video of firefighters arriving to extinguish the blaze on his cellphone, and the fact that he asked the fellows if they needed any help (Of course, there’s much more, but you get the gist).

Jonathan Rinderknecht, the communist who ignited the 8 acre Lachman Fire was just charged with arson affecting property used in interstate commerce, destruction of property by fire, and timber set afire.

No word on whether the state and local employees who left that 8 acre fire… pic.twitter.com/hoQgDK5UuF

— Mann Made Cinema (@Hotshot_Movie) October 16, 2025

Now, the fire crews eventually beat the blaze back, managing to contain it to eight scorched acres.

This is where the exhaustive, joint Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearm, and Explosives (ATF) team investigation after the January fires provided a surprising answer for the origin of the devastating Pacific Palisades fire a week later. It wasn’t climate change, as so many cultists had spent the intervening months howling.

The Pacific Palisades conflagration, which consumed 23,000+ acres and some 7000+ structures, originated from the reignition of that Lachman Fire on the first of January.

It hadn’t been put out – it had just gone underground and smoldered along until whipped up almost a week later in the tinder-dry conditions by hurricane-force winds. 

…Despite the fire being put out by firefighters, it “continued to smolder and burn underground within the root structure of the dense vegetation” — reigniting on Jan. 7 during heavy winds to become the Palisades fire, “one of the most destructive fires in Los Angeles history,” he said.

…The Palisades fire ignited about 10:30 a.m. on Jan. 7, sending firefighters to the Palisades hillside as winds howled at upward of 80 mph. By the time it was contained on Jan. 31, the fire had scorched more than 23,000 acres and had damaged or destroyed more than 7,000 structures.

And now we are finding out that the firefighters at the scene had been prematurely pulled off the fire, even though they’d protested, telling their battalion chief that it wasn’t out. That things were still smoky, and the ground was warm. But the chief told them to pack the hoses anyway and get out.

So they did as they were ordered.

According to Los Angeles Times journalist Paul Pringle, firefighters on the January 1 Palisades fire were ordered by their Battalion Chief to pack up their hoses and leave. That’s exactly what the firefighters did.

LAFD has 67 Battalion Chiefs. It should not be that difficult… pic.twitter.com/Sxc0pbCAke

— Kevin Dalton (@TheKevinDalton) October 31, 2025

Text messages between the crew and headquarters confirm their concerns and the orders to move out, regardless.

COULD THE PACIFIC PALISADES FIRE HAVE BEEN PREVENTED?

This is some damning – or should I say ‘more damning’ – stuff about the level of criminal competence in a major American city’s emergency responders.

Firefighters mopping up a small brush fire that authorities say reignited as the Palisades fire five days later were ordered to leave the original burn scene even though they complained the ground was still smoldering and rocks remained hot to the touch, according to firefighter text messages reviewed by The Times.

To the firefighters’ surprise, their battalion chief ordered them to roll up their hoses and pull out of the area on Jan. 2 — the day after the 8-acre blaze was declared contained — rather than stay and make sure there were no hidden embers that could spark a new fire, the text messages said.

On the morning of Jan. 7, according to federal authorities, strong winds stoked the remnants of the New Year’s Day blaze into the firestorm that killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes in Pacific Palisades, Malibu and Topanga.

In one text message, a firefighter who was at the scene on Jan. 2 wrote that the battalion chief had been told it was a “bad idea” to leave the burn scar unprotected because of the visible signs of smoldering terrain. “And the rest is history,” the firefighter wrote in recent weeks.

It’s horrific.

…This month, interim LAFD Chief Ronnie Villanueva said in a statement that the Palisades inferno was not due to “failed suppression” of the Lachman blaze. Instead, he said, it was the result of an “undetectable holdover fire” that lived deep within the roots.

In the text messages, firefighters complained that commanders failed to make certain that the mop-up was finished.

A second firefighter said in January that crews at Station 69 in the Palisades were surprised that they were told to roll up their hoses the day after the fire, according to the texts.

The firefighter was told that tree stumps were still hot at the location when the crew packed up and left, according to the texts. As a standard precaution, the hoses had been left there in case hidden embers sparked a flare-up.

A different firefighter said this month that crew members were upset when told to pack up and leave, but that they could not ignore orders, according to the texts. The firefighter also wrote that he and his colleagues knew immediately that the Jan. 7 fire was a rekindle of the Jan. 1 blaze.

John wants to see people in jail after it was revealed by the @latimes that firefighters in Pacific Palisades were told to leave the Lachman Fire burn area by their superiors even though the firefighters on scene had sent text messages about the fire still smoldering! @KFIAM640 pic.twitter.com/9x5ZkbbqHQ

— The John Kobylt Show (@JohnKobyltRadio) October 30, 2025

This is also going to cut the legs out from under Gavin Newsom’s strategy to dodge any fiscal responsibility for the Pacific Palisades fire. 

It wasn’t an act of God or revenge of the climate gods – it was yet another case of incompetence on the part of Los Angeles fire professionals’ well-paid, buffoon-laden hierarchy.

Gavin Newsom really doesn’t want you to see this clip. If both the LA Times and friggin Fox News are reporting on Gavin Newsom’s culpability for the Palisades Fire…you know it ain’t looking good for the GavHands. Both sides of the aisle hate the guy. https://t.co/1apNMO5BRZ

— Mann Made Cinema (@Hotshot_Movie) October 28, 2025

Twelve people are dead. Families have suffered incalculable losses, lives have been ruined and changed forever, and to find out all the destruction and death hinged on one, catastrophically bad decision? 

It could easily tip some fragile soul over the edge.

Damn.

The hits keep coming for those folks.

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