(Editor’s note this movie was shared with CTN as the driver went on PCH towards Santa Monica. The Palisades Village could have been saved, if the first home had been put out. The film shows the Upper Bel-Air Beach Club building standing, but Lower Pulgas Canyon was burning. At 3:50 p.m. Palisades Bowl and Tahitian Terrace were standing. At that time there were no firetrucks on PCH.)
March 13, 2025, The Public Records Request from Circling the News was:
When people evacuated down Temescal Canyon Road around 8:30 p.m. on January 7 there were lines of fire trucks in the Will Rogers Beach Parking lot. When a separate group of residents evacuated early morning on January 8, there were still lines of fire trucks in the Will Rogers Beach Parking lot. Why were the trucks not up in neighborhoods putting out spot fires? Why was the Palisades High School swimming pool on Temescal (at Bowdoin) and other neighborhood pools not used to put out the fires on Radcliffe, that eventually burned all the way to the bluffs. I was told that both City and County fire trucks have an eductor pump that would allow them to use swimming pool water.
March 14, 2025, REQUEST CLOSED:
The Palisades incidents are the subject of an active investigation by the ATF National Response Team, which prevents information related to the fire from being disclosed at this time. The Department is cognizant of its responsibilities under the Act. It recognizes the statutory scheme was enacted to maximize citizen access to the workings of government. The Act does not mandate disclosure of all documents within the government’s possession. Rather, by specific exemption and reference to other statutes, the Act recognizes that there are boundaries where the public’s right to access must be balanced against such weighty considerations as the right of privacy, a right of constitutional dimension under California Constitution, Article 1, Section 1. The law also exempts from disclosure records that are privileged or confidential or otherwise exempt under either express provisions of the Act or pursuant to applicable federal or state law, per California Government Code Sections 7927.705, 7922.000, and 7928.300. In accordance with Section 7920 of the California Government Code, records of investigations conducted by, or investigatory files compiled by, any local police agency for law enforcement purposes, are exempt from disclosure. The information you seek, is investigative records or properly part of an investigatory file; therefore, we are denying your request. This request is considered closed.
(Editor’s note: Well-known writer and Palisadian Finn-Olaf Jones https://www.finnolafjones.com) wrote about his “fire” experiences in the comment section of CTN. I’ve included them here.
I was driving around Sunset/Chautauqua/Muskingham from 4:30-5:30 p.m. on Tuesday when the fire jumped Sunset, and set Pali High on fire. The wind was blowing strongly East and the embers were setting the hill above Muskingham afire and threatening the central village and all the houses on the bluffs and along Potrero Canyon.
There was not a single fire truck there. Me and another fellow started using garden hoses to put out the small ember fires…they were not a big deal but there were many of them…until there got to be too many.
I finally located a single firetruck on Antioch but he didn’t have time for us. Had there been two-three rigs parked there with water, the fire would have been stopped there. But we’ll never know as the fire department never showed up.
Around 10 p.m. I finally found a few dozen firetrucks neatly parked on Will Rogers Beach, with the crews sipping coffee, joking amongst themselves and setting up that giant elevated stage for their all-night 20-member press conferences. At no point in the entire night did I see an LA Firefighter fighting a fire. There were a couple of out-of-county trucks there but that was it. There was also the Pacific Ocean right there, kind of a nice water supply when needed.
I counted six firetrucks parked on Sunset at Paul Revere on Tuesday night around 11:30 p.m. along with some two dozen police cars….all doing absolutely nothing.
When I returned the next morning and got through with my press credentials, I stopped to ask a gathering of firemen standing around Allenford what they were doing there. I parked in front of the fire hydrant there and they told me not to! I answered as casually as possible that it appeared to me that they hadn’t used any of the fire hydrants that night, including the yellow one in front of my driveway which was untouched when I returned to the ash pit that was now my house.
How dare they even have the right to call themselves fire fighters we have always respected? How can we even thank them as a whole? Can we ever trust them again?
So many people have had their lives ruined because people we always looked up to failed us. It will take years for people to regain their trust and respect.