One Year Later: LAFD Admits Palisades Fire Report Was Edited to Protect Leadership

It has been almost exactly a year since the Palisades fires swept through hundreds of homes resulting in a dozen deaths. The fire started a week earlier when an arsonist, who is now in custody, started a fire that burned 8 acres in the hills above the Palisades. That was known as the Lachman fire. That fire was put out but smoldering remains burst back into flames a week later and became the deadly Palisades fire.

What happened between those two dates has been a matter of contention. An official statement from the interim fire chief, Ronnie Villanueva, claimed the Palisades fire was a “holdover fire” which is a term of art in firefighting that indicates the fire was subterranean and all but undetectable. That’s opposed to a “rekindle fire” which suggests that embers were left burning at or near the surface which later roared back to life. In effect, Villanueva claimed that no one could have known. 

But text messages uncovered by the LA Times indicated that firefighters who put out the Lachman fire were ordered to leave before the fire was completely out. They knew it was a bad idea at the time and also knew the Palisades fire which sprang back to life a week later was a rekindle.

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.

In short, LAFD officials lied to the public to avoid accountability. And then the same leadership went further and watered down the department’s official after-action report on the fire. Just before Christmas, the LA Times revealed that through successive drafts, any grounds for criticism of the department’s decisions was removed.

A first draft was completed by August, possibly earlier.

And then the deletions and other changes began — behind closed doors — in what amounted to an effort to downplay the failures of city and LAFD leadership in preparing for and fighting the Jan. 7 fire, which killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes, records obtained by The Times show.

In one instance, LAFD officials removed language saying that the decision not to fully staff up and pre-deploy all available crews and engines ahead of the extreme wind forecast “did not align” with the department’s policy and procedures during red flag days.

Instead, the final report said that the number of engine companies rolled out ahead of the fire “went above and beyond the standard LAFD pre-deployment matrix.”

These absolute idiots used an after-action report on the worst fire in LA history to effectively pat themselves on the back for going above and beyond. And they really seem to have thought no one would notice. That’s what they think of the taxpayers who rely on them and pay their salaries. As for the connection to the previous fire, they mostly ignored that.

Some drafts described an on-duty LAFD captain calling Fire Station 23 in the Palisades on Jan. 7 to report that “the Lachman fire started up again,” indicating the captain’s belief that the Palisades fire was caused by a reignition of the earlier blaze.

The reference was deleted in one draft, then restored in the public version, which otherwise contains only a brief mention of the previous fire. Some have said that the after-action report’s failure to thoroughly examine the Lachman fire reignition was designed to shield LAFD leadership and Mayor Karen Bass’ administration from criticism and accountability.

Weeks after the report’s release, The Times reported that a battalion chief ordered firefighters to roll up their hoses and leave the burn area on Jan. 2, even though they had complained that the ground was still smoldering and rocks remained hot to the touch. Another battalion chief assigned to the LAFD’s risk management section knew about the complaints for months, but the department kept that information out of the after-action report.

The whole thing is reminiscent of the Uvalde school shooting where hundreds of cops showed up and mostly did nothing while children and adults were dying. Except in this case, the people who did nothing wrote a report praising their own excellent work. 

The whole thing absolutely reeks of blue state politics where having Democrats in every office ensures that no one ever wants the Democrats in office held accountable for failure.

Today, the LAFD’s current chief, who replaced Villanueva last month, admitted the report was watered down junk designed to protect leadership from criticism.

The chief of the Los Angeles City Fire Department Tuesday acknowledged for the first time that the after-action report on the Palisades Fire was edited multiple times to make the department leadership look better.

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.”

And in case you’re wondering, they are still lying about how the fire got started.

Along with acknowledging the changes to the report, Moore also said the city failed to adequately ensure that the Jan. 1, 2025, Lachman fire was fully snuffed out. That fire reignited into the Palisades fire six days later.

Moore said the department “genuinely believed the fire was fully extinguished.”

“That was based on the information, conditions and procedures in place at that moment. That belief guided the operational decision-making that was made,” he said. “However, the outcome has made it incredibly clear that our mop-up and verification process needed to be stronger.”

“We have to own that, and I do,” he added.

Just go back to the excerpt at the top of this post. The people who were there could see the smoke rising and feel the heat. They knew it wasn’t out. So unless the prior procedures involved ignoring the people closes to the fire when they said the fire wasn’t out, this explanation doesn’t make any sense.

Would it be so hard to name the Chief who ordered firefighters to leave before the job was done? Would it be so hard to fire him or cut his pension if he’s gone already? Apparently that would be too much to ask. It’s one thing to generally admit mistakes were made a year later and after you’ve been caught red-handed, but it would be much too much to interfere with someone’s union-negotiated pension. Twelve people died and they’re still acting like barely telling the truth about why is a big step they should be thanked and rewarded for taking.

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