(The drone video is property of Gary Baum and cannot be reproduced without his permission.)
Could the Palisades Fire have been prevented? If proper protocol had happened after the January 1 Fireworks fire, the subsequent January 7 fire may never have happened.
Satellite imagery obtained by the New York Post taken about 20 minutes after the Palisades Fire began indicates that the origin of the smoke overlapped with the burn scar from the New Year’s Eve fire in the Temescal Ridge in the Santa Monica Mountains. Although the fire is still under investigation two and a half months later, it appears more and more likely a hot spot started the second fire.
During the March 13 presentation at the Palisades Community Council meeting on March 13 by MySafe LA: LA fire Council’s David Barrett answered questions. The last question he answered was at 57 minutes, 30 seconds click here.
Resident and a member of the Palisades Task Force on Homelessness, Sharon Kilbride said, “I have been privy to several burn scars after we have had fires in Pacific Palisades fireworks related and some homeless-warming fires related.
“LAFD puts out the fire and I have returned to those areas sometimes three, sometimes five days later and find hot spots, smoldering and little flames coming out. Of course I call it in and they say we’ll be down and that they’ll extinguish it again.
“Is there protocol for LAFD to revisit the burn scars a week or two after a fire occurs,” Kilbride asked.
Barrett answered, “There is a protocol to check in, but it is not a required protocol.”
He said the proper process, once a brush fire is extinguished, is to go through a process called “cold trailing. You turn the soil over maybe as much as 18 inches deep to find those hot spots.”
Barrett said the fire service refers to clumps of wood that still may be hot or full of embers as pineapples. “The idea is to find those before you leave.”
Why doesn’t L.A. do that? Barrett said the challenge for L.A. City is the high demand on resources.
In 2000, LAFD received 800 calls a day and transported 200 people to hospitals. This past year the average call load for LAFD was 1860 per day, 720 people were transported to hospitals every day
“Those districts are not based on fire; they are based on medical emergencies. They need to be able to get anywhere in their district in five minutes,” he said. “We need to make sure that evolves more about fire in fire at-risk areas.”
Barrett did not think L.A. needed more fire stations, but instead it was important that the stations that exist have the proper number of apparatus and the number of firefighters.
A CTN Reader sent a January 18, 2025, Washington Post story (“A Key ‘Weakness’ in L.A.’s Wildfire Strategy Went Unaddressed for Years, Post Probe Shows”). The paper had uncovered a previously unreported memo in which the chief told city fire commissioners that L.A. relied almost entirely on overburdened “hand crews” from other jurisdictions to handle its brush fire emergencies.
“Two years before wildfires incinerated swaths of Los Angeles, the city’s fire chief, Kristin M. Crowley, identified ‘one significant area of weakness’ in her department’s ability to contain wildfires.
“L.A. had no specialized wildland unit to respond to daily brush fires and scrape vegetation, dig ditches and do the other labor to ensure blazes did not spread or rekindle, she wrote on Jan. 5, 2023, asking for $7 million to assemble its own squad.
“In a memo that has not been previously reported, she told city fire commissioners that L.A. relied almost entirely on overburdened ‘hand crews’ from other jurisdictions to bring such muscle to its brush fire emergencies. Hand crews, the most elite of which are sometimes called ‘hotshots,’ fight wildfires with chain saws, axes and shovels, setting containment lines and then sticking around to meticulously monitor smoldering fires, feeling by hand for heat and digging out live spots to make sure fires don’t relight.
“The city staffed its own team — made up of unpaid, mostly teenage volunteers — only on Tuesdays and Thursdays after school,” the paper reported. “Crowley warned the commission that there would inevitably come a day when L.A. would need the important grunt work of a ‘hand crew’ and one would not be available, which could ‘mean the difference in containment or out of control spread.’”
This is so sad. I wonder if the LAPD helicopter’s FLIR systems are used to scan burn scars for hot spots. If not, it seems like low hanging fruit in terms of flare up prevention which took out Oakland and now it looks increasingly Pacific Palisades. Probably a work rule where LAFD has to pay for LAPD to undertake such a leveraging of city assets.
As a retired fire captain and Palisades resident the fire commissioner is way off base saying the resources are too busy to recheck an area after a fire. It is done all the time after a fire. The designation is “fire watch”. LAFD Fire Station 69 and Station 23 are two of the slowest stations averaging around 2-3 calls a day of LAFD 105 fire stations.
Fire Station 23 should have posted a firefighter “fire watch” with a “fire patrol unit” on January 7th which they have at fire station. When the National Weather Service declared a Red Flag Warning station 23 fire captain or Battalion 9 Chief should have ordered a fire watch of the burn area with a thermal imager to locate hot spots.
Regarding LAFD use of wildland firefighting handcrews, LAFD and Los Angeles County Fire Departments work together sharing resources on wildland fires. LACOFD automatically sends handcrews and helicopters on all LAFD wildland fires.
I am honestly disappointed with how LAFD responded to and managed of the Palisades Fire. I was able to enter the Palisades on January 8th to see the destruction and the loss of my home, but what was more disturbing was I saw homes, businesses and the Methodist Church survive the initial fire only to burn down on a later date.
When more residents start to realize this fire was preventable, once it did start how we were abandoned by LAFD and LAFD fire engines carried water