Mass chaos and confusion started with the Lachman Fire

The attorney for the plaintiffs will also be deposing a dozen Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) firefighters who were on site for the clean up. As everyone searches for answers as to how an entire town was allowed to burn down, firefighters seem caught in the middle. Many residents I spoke to left the burning Palisades without seeing a single firefighter. Firefighters and resources were not fully deployed to the Palisades. One Highland resident sent me pictures of the fire hydrant in front of his burned down home to demonstrate that no one had even tried to open the hydrant and use it. Crews managed to save Station 23 but none of the houses right behind it on the ABC streets. My own parents drove out of the Palisades late the night of January 7th. By that time they were driving over embers and through flames, without a single emergency responder in sight. Their home burned down the afternoon of January 8th, their neighborhood left to burn for over 24 hours. Residents report being told by firefighters to stand down while homes were actively burning. I saw this myself when I tried to get back into the Palisades on January 9th. Multiple trucks with dozens of firefighters were sitting at the beach parking lot eating breakfast, while a single home burned down just up the hill.

Firefighters have been caught in the middle: extremely upset about the situation, but unable to talk about what happened. Whistle blowers from the Fire Department told Spencer Pratt that they were stopped from properly dealing with the Lachman Fire by the State’s environmental representatives. I spoke to several firefighters who told me their stories of working the fires in the Palisades on January 7th, and what they believe went so horribly wrong.

At 10:30am, residents of the Palisades began to see billows of dark smoke, and then flames, rolling down the Highland hills. At the bottom of the Highlands, the evacuation of Calvary Christian School was in full swing. Faculty were sending students home with any parents who had an extra seat in their car and walking the rest of the students down to the fire station near the beach

At 11am, a Southern California Regional Fire Captain arrived at the staging area near that same fire station Sunset and Palisades Drive. He immediately knew something had gone wrong with the deployment. He described the scene as “mass chaos and confusion” and like a “war zone.” Parts of the town were already burning. Fire trucks were being sent one way up Palisades drive, while civilians were trying to exit the other. LAPD was on the scene to assist with non-fire evacuations, but there was so much confusion they were initially in the way, as fire fighters from other parts of LA County began to arrive.

At 12pm, the Regional Captain turned around on Palisades drive. Residents trying to drive down Sunset were running over the fire hoses, stopping the water supply, and blocking the trucks. At one point, the smoke and gusts of wind knocked him and another firefighter to the ground. Several on their team sustained long term injuries. The Regional Captain and his crew were sent to the Riviera Palisades. They stayed there all day. Earlier that morning, before the crew drove to the Palisades, someone at their station had put two loaves of bread and a jar of peanut butter in the truck that ended up feeding three crews that day; a small, Biblical sounding miracle in the midst of the flames. By that time the hillside was in flames with the smoke and gusts of wind knocking emergency personnel down to their knees. Another major issue was the live power lines that for some reason LADWP failed to de-energize. Fire trucks couldn’t get through many streets because of live wires laying across the ground.

The problems the Regional Fire Captain identified were the following: a failure to pre-deploy, chaotic deployment on the day-of, the choice not to deploy every possible resource, and a chronic lack of funding and manpower. LAFD has been chronically understaffed for years, so the department relied on assigning firefighters to an exhausting amount of overtime, as overtime is cheaper than hiring more full-time personnel. Firefighters believe Chief Crowley failed to recall all man-power to the fire that day because she was trying to spare already exhausted manpower.

An article in Fire compares the resources LAFD had during the Bel Air Fire of 1961 with those available in the Palisades Fire of 2025. From 1961 to 2025, the population of Los Angeles grew by 54%, while the number of firefighters grew by only 27%. Worse, the amount of available fire engines actually shrunk, from 320, with 260 being available for first line service, in 1961, down to 183, with only 83 fire engines available for front line service in 2025. This while the budget of the city of Los Angeles has grown from roughly 633.5 million in 1961, to an estimated 16.1 billion in 2025. An increase of over 2,000%. Mayor Villaragosa began a series of deep cuts, ultimately 10%, to the Fire department’s budget. The city permanently shut down 18 fire engines, 7 hook-and-ladder trucks, and 4 emergency medical vehicles. Mayor Bass initially cut funding for LAFD by $17.6M, though Fox News puts the cuts at closer to $30M. I asked the Regional Chief where the city resources were going, “Think about it,” he said, “to homelessness.”

What resources are not going to be clearing the brush on state land. Another fire captain I spoke to told me that he believes this is because it is cheaper to fight fires than it is to clean the brush year round, a process that is made extra costly and time-consuming by the state’s onerous environmental regulations. This claim is collaborated in a report by the California Council on Science & Technology (CCST), which concludes that, “Without defined mitigation funding that includes both direct and indirect cost benefits, California will systematically underinvest in risk reduction and as a result be compelled to over investing suppression.” Fire Maintenance Assistance Grants (FMAG) from FEMA, ensure that once a burning fire crosses a certain threshold of potential danger or expenditure of resources, Federal funding gets triggered, and suddenly the State Government is only on the hook for 25% of the cost of suppressing the fire. He said that it’s common practice for departments to allow a wildfire to burn, as long as it’s not burning structures, until it triggers the FMAG, and then suddenly the department is flush with resources driving in and bringing them lunch. This dangerous practice would explain the infamous “let Topanga State Park burn” memo.

The Regional Captain and his crew stayed up all night fighting the flames in the Palisades. Early on the morning of January 8th, they were redeployed to Malibu. As he drove through the town, he saw for the first time the rows upon rows of homes reduced to nothing but chimneys. At that point the veteran Fire Captain broke and cried. “This was more than a career fire,” he said, “This kind of changes you.”

Nearly a year later, as residents face Christmas for the first year without their homes, thousands of people’s lives are still irreparably changed. Twelve senior citizens died in the fire. More died this last year of stress and shock. After the Bel Air Fire of 1961, the city learned some valuable lessons, increasing resources for LAFD and building the Santa Ynez Reservoir for fighting fires, which was infamously empty on January 7th. The firefighters I spoke with wanted to tell their stories because they desperately want this to be another learning experience. These next few weeks, they will have their day to speak in court.