Palisades Fire Report Exposes Failures Before Homes Burned

Palisades Fire Report Exposes Failures Before Homes Burned

By the time some Pacific Palisades residents got an evacuation alert, homes had been burning for 40 to 90 minutes. The city had managed to notify them after the fire had already been burning through their neighborhood.

That delay appears in the Palisades fire report released October 2 by UL Research Institute’s Fire Safety Research Institute. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) requested the review of the January 2025 Southern California wildfires. It took 724 pages to document what happened. Thirty-one people died in the Palisades and Eaton fires; more than 16,000 structures were destroyed.

The trouble began before January 7. The Lachman fire, which later rekindled into the Palisades fire, had been contained on New Year’s Day. On January 2, a captain objected to taking away the hose crews might still need. He later saw a wisp of smoke. Another firefighter found a hot spot, though others said they had found none.

Crews removed the hose anyway. On January 3, firefighters checked another report of smoke but did not see any when they arrived. Investigators found no evidence of subsequent patrols for hot spots as dangerous fire weather approached. 

There had been reason to go back and check. The winds were forecast.

At 10:46 a.m. on January 7, a helicopter radioed that homes would likely be hit within minutes. At 11:29, an assistant chief called for evacuations down to Pacific Coast Highway. The city’s first evacuation order went out at 12:09.

City staff were still drawing the evacuation zones from street names read over the radio:

“As a result, LA Metro and EMD personnel were constructing evacuation zones manually based on spoken street names transmitted over radio traffic. When the first evacuation was ordered, more information was required between the field and LA Metro to determine the exact spelling of street names and define the geographic boundaries.”

Los Angeles County kept the previous shift at work that morning, giving it nearly 3,000 firefighters instead of about 1,500. Over at LAFD, the previous shift went home. City officials would soon be trying to undo that decision.

TV and radio carried the recall, inviting anyone with firefighting experience to call the department’s staffing number. LAFD needed its own employees and got a worldwide response. Thousands of calls from around the world clogged its staffing lines for more than 48 hours. The report says the city’s predeployment and recall processes departed from its written procedures and appeared largely driven by budget constraints.

Commanders initially set up at Fire Station 23, in the fire’s path and along a major evacuation route. They hesitated over requests for outside help while questioning who would pay. Fire and police personnel operated with different evacuation maps, a discrepancy they discovered late that day. Up to 26 units deployed without incident command knowing. 

The breakdown wasn’t limited to Pacific Palisades. Eighteen of the 19 people killed in the Eaton fire died in west Altadena. Most of that area did not get its evacuation order until 3:25 a.m. on January 8. The first 911 call west of Lake Avenue had come more than four hours earlier.

A paramedic squad was out there seeing houses burn, with embers coming down like snow. You would think that would reach the people deciding whether to evacuate the neighborhood. The squad was working independently of the fire incident, though, and its account never reached command.

The investigation describes several failures coming together under extreme fire conditions. It does not single out one official or one decision as the cause. Jeremy Padawer, a toymaker who lost his Palisades home, had heard enough explanations about the weather. He told the California Post:

“What made me angry wasn’t the fact that a fire burned my house down. That made me sad. They said it was climate change. They said it was human impact. They said that it was hurricane force winds.” 

Mayor Karen Bass says the findings confirm much of what officials already knew. She says 92 percent of recommendations from LAFD’s separate internal review have been implemented.

Ninety-two percent of the department’s own recommendations, to be clear. The independent review includes advice to revisit recently controlled fires before dangerous weather and settle concerns about hot spots before crews leave. A captain had raised concerns about removing the hose five days before the Palisades fire. Now there’s a recommendation.

The next evacuation order needs to beat the fire to the house. Eighteen people in West Altadena never got that chance. Los Angeles has had nearly 21 months to act.

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