The Los Angeles Fire Department finally released its internal investigation of the chaotic and short-handed response to the Palisades Fire — but failed to address the causes of the blaze, including new assertions that it was started by a previous fire that its personnel failed to fully extinguish.
On Wednesday, federal investigators claimed the worst wildfire in California history likely came from a previous blaze, the Lachman Fire, which prosecutors allege was set by firebug Jonathan Rinderknecht on Jan. 1.
According to arson investigators with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, that blaze quietly smoldered for six days until reigniting into the Palisades fire.
LAFD’s 70-page after-action report, released Wednesday, fails to address these new details.
The Palisades Fire started on Jan. 7 and was whipped up by strong winds into the hellacious inferno that reduced more than 6,000 buildings to ash.
The report doesn’t even directly connect the Lachman Fire to the Palisades Fire, other than referencing a call from an on-duty captain who believed the Lachman Fire had started up again.
Instead of citing a specific cause, the report focuses on a “perfect storm” of conditions — including dry vegetation, extremely strong winds, and a depleted water supply — that made the area ripe for a catastrophic burn.
LAFD neglected to keep outgoing firefighters on reserve despite the risk, the report admits.
Even members of Mayor Karen Bass’s administration knew about the fire risk, but the mayor left the city for an trip to Africa — leaving her thousands of miles away as the fire chewed through her city.
Overworked and understaffed fire crews, some going 36 hours without rest, battled exhaustion as they worked to contain the flames.
“Physical exhaustion caused performance and safety concerns. The combination of fatigue, exhaustion, and sleep deprivation severely hindered their ability to make safe decisions,” the report reads.
There was also a breakdown in communication in the critical first hours of the fire, leaving some teams to act on their own volition with no guidance from the top.
“Accountability for specialized resources … was left to individual company commanders, leading to informal assignments and a lack of accountability,” the report says.
Public evacuation orders were also disorganized and chaotic, causing traffic jams on key fire routes as residents fled their neighborhoods.
“There was a delay in communicating evacuation orders, warnings, and shelter-in-place notifications to the public. As a result, spontaneous evacuations occurred without structured traffic control, causing citizens to block strategic routes to the fire,” according to the report.
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