Looking down on homes destroyed by the Palisades Fire on Haverford, Radcliffe and Bowdoin from the steps in the alley by the Methodist Church.
Thanks for continuing to look for answers as to how our community was
allowed to burn to the ground. I don’t think we will get straight answers
from our elected officials. Ours is a one-party government run entirely by
liberal democrats who are in political damage control mode protecting
themselves and each other. Even Mr. Soboroff has said not to look for who’s
to blame.
Now we find out he is being paid $500,000 for only three month’s
work and he couldn’t even show up for that meeting with the president. What
is his job anyway? To soothe rich Hollywood powerbrokers? A February LA Times article (“Who’s in Charge of Palisades Fire Recovery? The Answer Has Gotten Complicated”) shows that no one knows who is in charge of what. Soboroff admits he has no power to do anything, so why is he getting so much money?
Like you, I am not one of the super-rich in the Palisades. We had our house
for 61 years. All our memories and keepsakes have been destroyed. Our
house was our biggest asset and now it’s gone.
Our city failed us, plain and simple. People need to be held accountable. The Palisades Fire will go
down as the most expensive disaster in American history. How could that
happen?
We have had extreme wind events before. In 2019 we had an evacuation order
when a fire erupted in the Sepulveda Pass. They scrambled significantly more
air assets on that one and knocked it out fast. They knew then how bad it
could get if they didn’t hit it fast.
What happened this time? The winds were not that strong at 10:30 am. Was it the airspace closure due to Biden being in town? Was it lack of urgency? Were both the reservoirs empty and the pumps in disrepair? Why was there no staging in known fire zones as is standard practice? If the first 911 call came at 10:15, why was the first engine on site at 11 a.m. with a station just five minutes away?
And now, why are fire fighters treated as heroes getting free tickets to
Disneyland and Mammoth Mountain after completely abandoning the Palisades to
burn.
When we evacuated from the Via Bluff at 5 p.m. we did not see a single
fire truck anywhere. This is the biggest failure of a municipal fire
department since the Lahina fire in Maui. Probably the worst in modern
history. Maybe the free tickets and discounts should go to victims
instead.
So many questions need to be answered truthfully. To use an apt phrase
regarding all those who were in charge, keep holding their feet to the fire
until we get those answers.
A Palisades resident
The Democratic Party of Los Angeles is a CULT.
Either leave this party or accept the fact that these people
Will eventually murder you and your family either by fire, out of control crime,
Allowing environmentalists make policy decisions
Or Unsolved homelessness.
They are delusional, they have no idea what they are doing.
Palisades Democrats really need to accept this.
It’s a cult
Just a clarification, as ofMayor Bass and Mr. Soboroff have said that he will not be taking any payment for his work.
Thank you for saying what everyone is thinking!
I am a black lesbian with enough intelligence and common sense to see how a local government prioritizing DEI over competence has done more harm than good. Hire those who think critically and execute jobs competently and by doing so you will do more to move DEI initiatives along than anything else I can think of…
Agree.
It’s so interesting to me that I keep hear that no one saw any firefighters in the Alphabets, Via Bluffs, Huntington etc. Where were they? Only the highlands? Didn’t reinforcements show up by 3 or 5 pm? Someone needs to take a closer look into the timeline and precise locations of fire vs firefighters. I appreciate the firefighters so much and think it is a failure of leadership to get them out sooner. But the big question is why or how they weren’t in all the neighborhoods. Who told
Them not to go? Or who told them where to go?? So many questions.
Biggest question still to be answered: Why did the LAFD abandon their fire lines and instead park their rigs down on the beach and over at Paul Revere, far from the private citizens and contractors who were successfully fighting the fires they abandoned. Moreover, why didn’t they warn us that they were leaving us defenseless against the fires so we could have spent those 3-4 hours saving our valuable. The LAFD was LESS than helpful that Tuesday. They actually harmed us by sneaking away without warning.
Biggest question still to be answered: Why did the LAFD abandon their fire lines and instead park their rigs down on the beach and over at Paul Revere, far from the private citizens and contractors who were successfully fighting the fires they abandoned. Moreover, why didn’t they warn us that they were leaving us defenseless against the fires so we could have spent those 3-4 hours saving our valuables? The LAFD didn’t help us, they harmed us.
We were the last to leave the Highlands on the morning of the 8th before our house burned to the ground. There were absolutely no firefighters in the Highlands, nor did we have any police or fire presence the entire time we were home. Also, the water stopped working in our houses by 6 pm on the 7th. How was it possible the people we hire to serve and protect abandoned an entire community who had no exit options other than two roads engulfed entirely in flames?