After the flames escalated the Pacific Palisades most of the time, the Los Angeles Fire Department and Mayor Karen Bass’ office made extraordinary confidentiality about the city’s preparation and reaction to hell.
The fire department, the mayor and her representatives have not yet provided answers to basic questions about the times, regarding whether they approved or even reviewed LAFD’s plans to protect Palisades ahead of the January 7 fire. They also did not talk about the Times’ first LAFD crew member to arrive on the scene.
Meanwhile, LAFD denied dozens of public record requests related to the handling of the fire, including 911 calls, dispatch logs and internal communications, involving the preparation of extreme winds.
Two former LAFD chief officials said the records should be available since the early days of the fire.
Some victims of the Palisades fire criticized the lack of transparency, while open government advocates say the city’s lawsuit to refuse to release public records violates the disclosure laws.
“It’s absolutely frustrating,” Supasco said. “People do want answers and don’t get answers. ”
Political careers may be online. There are billions of compensation, the fire may be The most expensive disaster in Los Angeles history. Nearly 7,000 houses and other buildings were destroyed and 12 people died. Already a newborn Recall campaign Bass aims to be re-election next year. The mayor has been very intense Criticism to Ghana Three days before the fire, although the predicted danger of wind became increasingly terrifying after she left.
The silence of these issues has been represented by the council members representing Palisade in the weeks since the fire extended to the Tracy Park office. Like the Beth Office, Parker and her staff did not respond to several New York Times emails asking for interviews and obtain information, including things like things like water helicopters arrive at the fire and the delay in responding to the fire.
On February 21, the bass removed Kristin Crowley as fire chief, citing Crowley’s decision to deploy before the fire was the reason. Parker is one of 15 members of parliament. Vote against Crowley’s sacksaid she could not support the dismissal before completing an inquiry asking who should blame him for the preparation and reaction to the fire.
The Times reported on Crowley and her staff in January Choose not to order 1,000 firefighters continued on duty on the second shift on the morning of the fire, which would double the number of people on hand. Crowley and her fire commander said they did not conduct the shift because they did not have enough engines to accommodate so many firefighters.
They said LAFD Budget Approved by Bath and the City Council, preventing the department from hiring enough mechanisms to keep the engine on site. As a result, they said that on the day of the fire, 40 ordinary engines (one fifth of the LAFD’s fleet) failed.
Crowley told the city council earlier this month that she was trying to get her job back. “As a result of budget cuts and lack of investment in maintenance of our fleet, our more than 100 fire trucks, firetrucks and ambulances are sitting in our maintenance codes and cannot help help in one of the worst wildfire incidents in our history. ”
But holding shifts can allow commanders to meet the needs of emergency personnel without relying on firefighters who volunteer to attend. The former Shishi said those who don’t need it will be sent home with equipment.
The Times found that when preparing for the wind, the department was equipped with only five of the more than 40 available engines (unlike the rigs for those with disabilities) to supplement conventional firefighting forces. This means there are dozens of working engines that can be pre-positioned in Palisade and elsewhere, Like in the past In similar weather.
They are called 200 Series engines internally, and they are the same as other engines, usually paired with water-free hooks and flux trucks. When wildfires are needed, they carry four firefighters. The former chief LAFD told The Times that the department could also be reassigned to Palisades and other high-risk areas, in addition to several other engines, which can be reassigned from stations not in fire zones in addition to 200 series rigs.
And if Crowley puts 1,000 firefighters on duty, in addition to the engine, there can be staffed support vehicles, such as trucks for patrol brushing and “insert off-road vehicles”, which are utility pickups that can carry supplies and relieve firefighters and perform other tasks.
As for mechanics, according to records released by the fire department, the number has fluctuated between 64 and 74 since 2020. As of this year, the institution has 71 mechanics.
Crowley hasn’t answered a question from the Time for weeks about the exact whereabouts of the engine before the fire and which engines or engines were first asked, among other questions.
LAFD and the city spent more than a month providing regular maintenance and repair records for disabled engines and other fleets. The documents show that some engines have been out of production for months or even years, and some of them are marked “salvage.” The records did not provide any explanation for the long delay in repairing the engines, and LAFD did not answer specific questions about them.
The New York Times reviewed more than 150 requests for wildfires submitted to LAFD on the New York City online portal, including responses to the request.
About 40 people were denied, and officials claimed they were excluded from disclosure due to ongoing investigations into the causes of the fire. In some cases, they cited an exemption that kept the record private significantly outweighed the public interest, without further explanation. Other requests are not reached until after the deadline set out in the Public Records Act.
LAFD also refused to hand over communication between commanders to deployment and staffing decisions, claiming to be exempted. With a few exceptions, the Public Records Act states that any written communications (including emails and text messages) relating to government actions are public records.
In response to multiple recordings about the 911 recording, the Federal Alcohol Agency, tobacco, guns and explosives investigated the cause of the fire, “preventing information related to the fire from being disclosed at this time,” the city said on its online portal.
The same exemption was cited for a record request regarding the small fire on New Year’s Day, which could be linked to the January 7 fire. Among other potential causes, the ATF is investigating whether the embers hidden in earlier fires cause larger fires when the wind kicks.
David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Alliance, said the city had no “blank checks” to withhold records due to investigations into the fire. He also said that before the fire was a public record, regardless of subsequent investigations, a public record.
“The public does have an overwhelming interest in understanding how the fire department responds to this crisis in real time,” he said. “What possible interest can be given by retaining this information? Except that they don’t want people to know, I can’t understand.”
The Times filed a public record request on January 10 to learn about all text messages Bass sent or received on January 7 and January 8 to mention the fire response or her travel plans, and her office said nearly two months later that it had no “responsive messages.”
The city’s lawyer says Bass phone automatically deletes text messages and thinks she doesn’t need to keep texts because they are “ephemerized types of electronic communication”. Bass and her lawyers later said they would search the text and hand over a “responsive record.” Last Friday, they provided Some text messages for bass In the Times, unspecified numbers are “deleted and/or withheld” under the exemption of the California Public Records Act.
The Times obtained an incident log from sources, showing that the first 911 call about the fire appeared at 10:29 a.m. and it took firefighters more than 18 minutes to arrive at the scene.
Former department official says LAFD Could have sent at least 10 other engines Palisades before the fire – an engine that might patrol the hillside and canyon, where the crew may have spotted the fire shortly after the fire, when it was still small enough to give them a chance to control it.
The two fire stations in Palisade usually have only 18 firefighters on duty. There are usually 14 that can be used to hit a brush fire, while the other four are assigned to ambulances, although they may help with evacuation or rescue in the fire.
Pascoe, a Palisades resident and journalist, said her request for information about the early firefight, but the city received no response from New York City.
“If you mess it up, let us know,” she said. “Whatever the error is, we need to know, so no one will happen again.”
Fire crews are usually pre-deployed in Palisades during the Red Flag period, and when the fire is lit, the LAFD helicopters respond soon, Pascoe said. She said it didn’t happen this time.
“It seems that there is no support anywhere,” Pasco said, evacuating on the afternoon of January 7 when she saw the fire burning on the hills in the house. “We think they’ll be eliminated and we’ll be back the next day because we’ve done it before. … It doesn’t seem like this needs to happen and it does have to be held accountable.”
