L.A. fire officials could have put engines in the Palisades before the fire broke out. They didn’t
As the Los Angeles Fire Department faced extraordinary warnings of life-threatening winds, top commanders decided not to assign for emergency deployment roughly 1,000 available firefighters and dozens of water-carrying engines in advance of the fire that destroyed much of the Pacific Palisades and continues to burn, interviews and internal LAFD records show.
Fire officials chose not to order the firefighters to remain on duty for a second shift last Tuesday as the winds were building — which would have doubled the personnel on hand — and staffed just five of more than 40 engines that are available to aid in battling wildfires, according to the records obtained by The Times, as well as interviews with LAFD officials and former chiefs with knowledge of city operations.
The department only started calling up more firefighters and deploying those additional engines after the Palisades blaze was burning out of control.
No extra engines had been placed in the Palisades, where the fire broke out about 10:30 a.m. on Jan. 7, officials said. The department pre-positioned nine engines to the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood that were already on duty, expecting that fires might break out there. Officials said they moved more engines “first thing in the morning” to also cover northeast L.A.
The Times’ findings come as LAFD officials continue to assert that the firefighting effort was hampered by cuts in the department’s budget and low water levels for some fire hydrants. They only acknowledged their decisions not to assign more firefighters or pre-position more of the available engines after The Times presented them with internal documents describing the department’s actions.
Fire Chief Kristin Crowley defended her agency’s decisions, saying that commanders had to be strategic with limited resources while continuing to handle regular 911 calls. She said the number of calls doubled Tuesday from a typical day, to 3,000 at the LAFD’s 106 fire stations, as the high winds downed trees and power lines.
“The plan that they put together, I stand behind, because we have to manage everybody in the city,” Crowley told The Times.
But several former chiefs with deep experience in LAFD tactics said most of the more than 40 available engines could have been pre-deployed to fire zones before the Palisades blaze started, while others were kept at stations to help with the increase in 911 calls. Those engines were eventually used to fight the Palisades fire and other blazes or to fill in for other engines deployed to the front line, current LAFD officials said.
“The plan you’re using now for the fire you should have used before the fire,” said former LAFD Battalion Chief Rick Crawford. “It’s a known staffing tactic — a deployment model.”
Over the past several days, Crowley and other officials have given The Times varying accounts of how many engines were available to supplement regular deployments. An internal planning document obtained by The Times from a source showed that the department said “no” to deploying an additional nine engines, known as “ready reserve” engines, to fire-prone areas. Those are different from the nine engines that were pre-positioned in the Valley and Hollywood.
Crowley initially told The Times that most of the ready reserve engines were inoperable or otherwise unavailable. Later, however, a spokesperson for Crowley said just four of the nine were not immediately available. A third official then produced a document that said seven were put into service at one point or another — most of them after the fire ignited.
Other engines from the group of more than 40 could have been tapped in place of disabled ready reserve ones, Crawford and other sources told The Times.
Deputy Chief Richard Fields, who was in charge of staffing and equipment decisions ahead of Tuesday’s fire, said in an interview that his plan for deployment was “appropriate for immediate response.”
“It’s very easy to Monday-morning quarterback and sit on the couch and tell us what we should have done now that the thing has happened,” he said. “What we did was based on many years of experience and also trying to be responsible for the rest of the city at any given time of that day.”
Some fire officials also have suggested that the winds were so fierce that no number of extra boots on the ground or engines at the ready could have stopped the flames.
Jason Hing, the department’s chief deputy of emergency operations, acknowledged that the resources that were pre-deployed were not enough, but he said that more may not have made a difference.
He also said that the staffing was similar to that of earlier red flag events.
“That fire was the most erratic behavior I’ve ever seen — 60- to 90-mile-an-hour winds pushing through in multiple directions, spotting like I’ve never seen before,” Hing said. “There was no way anybody was going to catch that fire.”
But others maintain that the more defenses the department had in place, the better the prospects of corralling the fire when it was small, no matter the speed and behavior of the winds. They cited an LAFD operations publication that states, “Our first-alarm brush response is based on a ‘hit it hard and fast’ concept. … If it is a high-hazard day, (fire) companies will be pre-deployed.”
“Every fire starts the size of a match head,” said Crawford, who is now emergency and crisis management coordinator for the U.S. Capitol. He worked on a range of major wildfires, including the massive 2018 Camp fire in northern California, during his 33 years with the LAFD.
In response to last week’s wind warning, Crawford said he would have ordered the outgoing shift of about 1,000 firefighters to stay on duty that Tuesday, a measure known as a limited recall, as a second shift came on.
The department is staffed by three 24-hour shifts, or platoons, of firefighters. A limited recall enables commanders to fill emergency staffing needs, including for available engines, without having to depend on firefighters returning to duty voluntarily.
Limited recalls have been employed in other large conflagrations, and can be imposed before or after a fire breaks out. Crawford and other officials said concerns about the cost of a recall, including overtime pay, sometimes make commanders hesitant to order one.
Regardless of the cost, Crawford said, he would have staged at least 25 of the more than 40 available engines at stations that are closest to hillsides, including in the Palisades. Known internally as 200 Series engines, they are identical to other engines and placed around the city, usually paired with hook and ladder trucks, which do not carry water. In non-emergencies, they are staffed by a single engineer. When needed for wildfires, they carry four firefighters.
“You would have had a better chance to get a better result if you deployed those engines,” said Crawford, whose LAFD career included a stint as a captain in the department’s operations center. “You give yourself the best chance to minimize how big the fire could get. … If you do that, you have the ability to say, ‘I threw everything at it at the outset.’”
“That didn’t happen here,” he said, adding that the decisions not to use more of the 200 Series engines and order the shift to remain on duty were part of a “domino effect of missteps” by commanders.
Battalion Chief Patrick Leonard said the outgoing shift of firefighters was not ordered to continue working because “we didn’t have apparatus for another 1,000 members.” Apparatus would include engines. Leonard did not address why the shift wasn’t recalled to fully staff the 200 Series engines that were available, as the department has done during previous emergencies.
Crowley said firefighters already on duty, including fire inspectors, were quickly pressed into service to staff five more of the 200 Series engines, but that was after the Palisades blaze had begun its tear.
Some firefighters who volunteered to work after the fire had spread were sent home because there was nowhere to put them, Crowley added. Officials did not specify how many returned home.
The Palisades fire has burned nearly 24,000 acres and destroyed or damaged more than 5,300 homes and other structures, officials estimate. At least eight people have died in the fire, according to the Los Angeles County coroner’s office and Sheriff’s Department.
The Eaton fire, which started after the Palisades blaze in the Altadena area, has blackened more than 14,000 acres, destroyed or damaged 7,000 homes and other structures, and killed 17 people, officials say.
The day before any hazardous weather, LAFD officials are typically briefed in the afternoon by the National Weather Service and use that information to decide where to position firefighters and engines the following morning.
The weather service had been sounding the alarm about critical fire weather for days. “HEADS UP!!!” the NWS Los Angeles posted on X the morning of Jan. 6. “A LIFE-THREATENING, DESTRUCTIVE” windstorm was coming.
It hadn’t rained much in months, and wind gusts were expected to reach 80 mph. The so-called burning index — a rating that indicates the wildfire threat — was off the charts. Anything beyond 162 is considered “extreme,” and the burning index for that Tuesday was 268.
“There is high confidence in a life-threatening and destructive windstorm this afternoon through Wednesday morning,” LAFD officials wrote in an internal memo detailing staffing assignments for Jan. 7, echoing the weather service.
The ready reserve engines are supposed to be available for weather emergencies and sometimes to replace broken rigs at station houses.
Crowley said that in a “perfect world,” she would have staffed the ready reserve engines, but budget cuts that eliminated half of the LAFD’s mechanic positions have left many in disrepair. Two are out of service and need to be fully replaced, officials said.
In any event, Fields said he didn’t think he needed the engines when planning for the windstorm because they would not necessarily have been a “game changer.”
“I accept that we could be scrutinized for not having enough after the thing has happened,” Fields said. “But I would challenge any of those people that scrutinize that to make a different decision prior to the thing happening.”
He, like Crowley, said that pre-deploying more engines could not have been done at the expense of the department’s ability to handle emergencies outside the fire zone.
Crawford, however, said pre-deploying 25 of the 200 Series engines for a threatened wildfire — five times the number that were assigned the morning before the Palisades blaze — would have left 15 or so in station houses to help with 911 calls unrelated to the fire.
“That’s more than enough,” he said.
