The Palisades Fire Cover Up Continues

A week ago the current chief of the LA Fire Department admitted that an after-action report on the Palisades fire, which killed 12 people and destroyed hundreds of homes, was intentionally watered down to make the LAFD look good.

While speaking at the LA Fire Commission meeting, Chief Jaimie Moore said the report was tweaked several times to thwart the blame on the LAFD leaders.

“It is now clear that multiple drafts were edited to soften language and reduce explicit criticism of the department leadership in that final report,” Moore admitted. “This editing occurred prior to my appointment as Fire Chief. And I can assure you that nothing of this sort will happen ever again while I am Fire Chief.”

I pointed out at the time that Chief Moore went out of his way not to name the people responsible for watering down the report, much less promising to punish them in any way. And this week he made it crystal clear that nothing will happen to them for their outrageous attempts to lie to the public. Instead Chief Moore says he’s going to focus on the future.

After admitting last week that the Los Angeles Fire Department’s after-action report on the Palisades fire was watered down so as not to reflect poorly on top command staff, Fire Chief Jaime Moore said Monday he does not plan to determine who was responsible.

Moore said he is taking a forward-looking approach and not seeking to assign blame for changes to the Oct. 8 report that downplayed the city’s failures in preparing for and responding to the disaster. But he said his predecessor, interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva, ultimately was responsible for releasing the contents of the report…

“I don’t think there’s really any benefit to me” looking into who made the edits, Moore said in an interview with The Times. “I can see where the original report and the public report aim to fix the same thing.

The liars had good intentions. That’s basically what he’s saying. Sure, they lied to everyone but Chief Moore knew there hearts were in the right place so why chastise anyone or, you know, fire them. Isn’t it better to just look forward?

Well, no, it’s not better. If people intentionally screwed up the report to cover their own asses, why let them get away with it? Why not uncover them and make them pay? Chief Moore is now the chief of this department. If he doesn’t care about holding people accountable for lying to the public in reports, who will care? I can tell you the answer is nobody. He’s sending the message to everyone that if you cover for the department, you’ll be coved for as well. 

And there’s another angle here which might be relevant. An early copy of the report in question was sent to Mayor Karen Bass’s office.

Interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva said that a “working draft” had been sent to Mayor Karen Bass’ office, Genethia Hudley Hayes told The Times on Tuesday.

In the conversation, which took place in mid-August or later, Villanueva said that the mayor’s office had asked for “refinements,” but he did not say what they were, according to Hudley Hayes.

But Hudley Hayes, who was appointed to an LAFD oversight board by Bass, is saying almost the same thing as Chief Moore, i.e. the report was changed but the differences didn’t really matter.

Hudley Hayes said that after reviewing an early draft of the after-action report, as well as the final document released by the LAFD on Oct. 8, she was satisfied that “material findings” were not altered.

But her account raises questions about the mayor’s role in revisions to the report that, as Moore conceded Tuesday, downplayed the city’s failures in preparing for and responding to the fire, which killed 12 people and leveled much of the Palisades and surrounding areas…

She added that she does not know who ordered the changes disclosed by The Times — and despite her oversight role, is “not particularly” interested in finding out.

So the fire chief says the report was watered down and it won’t ever happen again, but Hudley Hayes says the findings weren’t altered so no big deal. Which one is it? At least the are both in agreement that they don’t care who made the changes or why. As for Mayor Bass, she claims her office didn’t make any changes at all. How do we know? Well, you just have to take their word for it.

All of this smells like a really shoddy cover-up. And wait, there’s more! 

You may recall that the watered-down after action report barely mentioned the connection between the Lachman fire and the Palisades fire a week later. There’s really no doubt that the Palisades fire was just a rekindle of the earlier fire which firefighters had failed to completely snuff out because they were ordered to leave.

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…

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…

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.

Chief Moore says he asked around and no one has stepped forward with proof those messages were real so he’s ready to move on and let someone else look into it.

“I have asked everyone if there’s any text messages to please show them to me,” Moore told ABC7. “I’ve spoken directly with the incident commander, and he swears to me, nobody ever said anything to him about the fire still burning.”

Moore was asked if he has learned of any indication that those firefighters in the Palisades who responded to the Lachman Fire on Jan. 1, 2025 raised any alarms about hot spots and were told to leave the scene earlier than they should have.

“I have no indication that they did that other than what’s been reported in the media,” Moore responded. “I have to believe it, but nobody’s ever come forward.”

This is the worst cover up I’ve ever seen since Joe Biden is sharp as a tack. The complete lack of interest in holding anyone accountable could only happen in a and city run entirely by one party. No one wants to destroy their career by speaking up so the people who failed to do their job just get a pass.