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More than two months after the flames levelled most of the Pacific Pallisade, the Los Angeles Fire Department and Mayor Karen Bass’ offices maintain exceptional secrets about the city’s preparation and response to hell.
The fire department, mayor and her representatives have yet to provide answers to basic questions from the Times regarding whether they approved LAFD’s plan to protect Palisades prior to the January 7th flame. They also haven’t addressed the Times questions about which LAFD crew arrived on scene.
At the same time, the LAFD rejected dozens of public record requests from journalists and others related to handling the fire, including 911 calls, dispatch logs and internal communications regarding extreme wind preparation.
Two former LAFD chief executives say these records should have been able to be released from the beginning of the fire.
While some victims of the Palisades fire have criticised the lack of transparency, public government advocates say their refusal to release the city’s public records is a violation of the disclosure law.
“That’s absolutely frustrating,” said Sue Pascoe, who lost his home for 30 years in the fire. “People want an answer, they don’t get an answer.”
Political careers could be on the line. With billions of damages, the fire could be the most expensive disaster in LA’s history. Approximately 7,000 homes and other buildings were destroyed, killing 12 people. Already, the early recall campaign targets Bass, which is being re-elected next year. The mayor has been heavily criticized for traveling to Ghana three days before the fire, despite predictions of dangerous winds that have become increasingly miserable after she left.
In the weeks since the fire broke out, the silence of these questions extends to the office of Traci Park, a city council member representing Palisade. Park and her staff have not responded to several emails from the Times requesting an interview. It helped me get information, including issues such as the arrival of helicopters that drop water into fires and the reasons for delayed response to flames.
On February 21, Bass removed Kristin Crowley as fire chief, citing Crowley’s decision to deploy as the reason. Park, one of two of the 15 councillors, voted against Crawley’s firing, saying he couldn’t support the firing before an investigation into who would condemn the fire preparations and failure to respond was completed.
The Times reported in January that Crawley and her staff had chosen not to order 1,000 firefighters to work for their second shift in the morning of the attack. Crawley and her firefighters said they weren’t holding the shift because they didn’t have enough engines for many of those firefighters.
They said certain cuts in the LAFD budget, approved by Bass and the city council, prevented the department from hiring enough mechanics to keep the engines in the field. As a result, they said one in five people in the LAFD fleet – 40 regular engines who were not on duty on the day of the fire.
“We didn’t have enough equipment to put them,” Crawley told City Council earlier this month in her bid to get her work back. “Due to budget cuts and lack of investment in fleet maintenance, over 100 fire engines, fire trucks and ambulances have been broken down into maintenance yards, which have not been able to serve in one of the worst wildfire events in our history.”
However, keeping the shift allows the commander to meet the needs of emergency personnel without voluntarily relying on firefighters. Those who don’t need it will hurry back and be sent home in gear in case they need it, the former chief said.
In wind preparation, the Times found that the department staffed up only five of the more than 40 available engines (a set of rigs that are different from those with disabilities) to compensate for normal firefighting. This meant there were dozens of work engines that could have been prepositioned at Pallisard and elsewhere, as they had been done during similar weather in the past.
Internally known as the 200 Series engines, these are identical to other engines and are combined with hook and ladder trucks that do not normally carry water. If necessary for a wildfire, they carry four firefighters. The department may have also reassigned several more engines to Palisades and other high-risk areas, in addition to the 200-series rigs from stations that are not fire zones, the former LAFD chief executive told The Times.
And if Crawley had 1,000 firefighters on duty, he could have staffed in non-engine support vehicles, such as brush patrol trucks or “plug buggies.”
As for mechanics, the number has fluctuated between 64 and 74 since 2020, according to records released by the fire department. As of this year, the agency had 71 mechanics.
For weeks, Crowley did not respond to questions from the era about the exact location of the engine before the flames, or which engine or engine responded first among other queries.
It took LAFD and the city over a month to provide the Times with routine maintenance and repair records for the faulty engines and other fleets. These documents show that some of the engines have been out of service for months, and even years, with some being labelled “rescue.” The record does not provide an explanation for long delays in engine repairs. The LAFD did not respond to specific questions about them.
The Times reviewed more than 150 requests for documents relating to wildfire preparation and responses filed with LAFD under the California Public Records Act, located on the city’s online portal.
Approximately 40 people have been denied, and officials claim they have been ruled out of disclosure as they have continued investigation into the cause of the flames. In some cases, they cited a catch-all exemption that keeping records private clearly outweighs the public interest. Other requests were not satisfied until much later the deadline specified in the Public Records Act.
The LAFD also refuses to take over communication between commanders regarding deployment and staffing decisions and has argued for catch-all exemptions. With a few exceptions, the Public Records Act states that written communications (including emails and text messages) related to government actions are public records.
In response to multiple requests for recording 911 on the Palisades fire, the city said on its online portal that an investigation into the cause of the flames caused by the Federal Alcohol Administration, cigarettes, firearms and explosives “prevents information related to the fire at this point.”
The same exemption was cited for a record request regarding the small flames on New Year’s Day in Pallisard, which could have been linked to the January 7 fire. Among other potential causes, the ATF is investigating whether the embers hidden from the early fire caused greater flames when the wind was kicked.
David Roy, legal director for the First Amendment Coalition, said the city does not have a “blank check” to withhold records to investigate the fire. He also said that records that were published prior to the fire remained public, regardless of subsequent investigations.
“The public is overwhelmingly interested in knowing how the fire department is responding to this crisis in real time,” he said. “What benefits will it offer by withholding that information? I can’t guess except that they don’t want people to know.”
The Times filed a request for public records on January 10th for all text messages sent or received by Bass on January 10th, January 7th and January 8th.
The city’s lawyer said Bass “automatically text messages on phones,” and insisted that there is no need to keep text because it is a “ephemeral type of electronic communication.” Bass and her lawyer later searched the text and said they would hand over the “responsive records.” Last Friday, they provided the Times with some of Bass’ text messages, saying that an unspecified number was “edited and/or withheld” under the Public Records Act exemption.
The Times retrieved incident logs from sources indicating that it took firefighters more than 18 minutes to reach the scene after the first 911 call on the fire entered 10:29am.
Former department officials said the LAFD may have sent at least 10 additional engines to the Palisade prior to the fire. The engine, which may have been on patrol along the hillside and canyon, may have discovered the fire as soon as it began.
Typically, only eight firefighters on duty at two fire stations in Pallisard are employed. Of these, 14 are routinely available to combat brush fires, while the other four will be assigned to ambulances, which may be useful for evacuation and rescue during the fire.
Palisades resident and journalist Pascoe said her requests for information about the early shootout were not being answered by the city.
“If you’re ruined, let us know,” she said. “Whatever the mistake is, we need to know, so this will never happen to anyone again.”
Pascoe said firefighter crews are usually pre-deployed at Pallisard on Red Flag Days, and LAFD helicopters respond quickly when a fire occurs. She said it didn’t happen this time.
“It seemed like there was no support anywhere,” Pascoe said. Pascoe was evacuated on the afternoon of January 7th when he saw him burning up the hill from his house. “We thought they were going to be released and we came back the next day because we’ve done it before. …This doesn’t have to happen and it seems someone has to be accountable.”
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