Emergency responders told Senate leaders Wednesday that local leaders are to blame for the Palisades fire, a day after President Trump signed an executive order to override state and local authorities and take over rebuilding efforts in the Los Angeles area.
Two fire department chiefs said the fire’s catastrophic aftermath last year was the result of leaving a previous fire unmanaged, a densely populated community with limited evacuation routes, an empty reservoir and no predeployment — all of which are the fault of local officials.
“Firefighters were forced to improvise without adequate resources, unified command or consistent safety oversight, Patrick Butler, the Redondo Beach Fire Department fire chief, said. “This was not a failure of effort by firefighters; it was a failure of leadership above them.”
Significant portions of the Pacific Palisades burned down last January, destroying about 13,000 residential properties. The fire burned for more than three weeks, and cleanup efforts took seven months.
The Senate Homeland Security Committee’s permanent subcommittee on investigation has an ongoing probe that may determine who is to blame for the blaze. But Chairman Ron Johnson, Wisconsin Republican, is shaking his finger at local officials: “It’s a failure of leadership.”
Rick Crawford, the former battalion chief for the Los Angeles Fire Department, said such disasters are stress tests of leadership, governance and institutional readiness.
He questioned why multiple agencies, from the state’s water department to utility companies, did not congregate to respond to fire risks.
Among the topics that needed to be discussed is the Santa Ynez Reservoir, which had been drained for maintenance purposes before the fires started.
What should have tipped off local authorities was the Lachman fire, which began days before the Palisades fire and was never fully extinguished, Mr. Butler said. When the National Weather Service issued repeated warnings of a life-threatening wind event, the Palisades and Lachman fires were clearly identified within the projected impact area, he said.
Mr. Crawford said the Los Angeles Fire Department’s failure to complete a thorough mop-up of the Lachman fire led to the Palisades fire.
What’s more, he said, the after-action reports were doctored.
The documents do not state who made what administrative decisions, which Mr. Crawford suspects would have been under the purview of the Los Angeles Fire Department.
He also said he believes the overtime request for firefighters to predeploy to the Palisades never landed on the Los Angeles mayor’s desk. He blames fiscal savings for why there was no such move.
Mr. Butler said such decisions were the downstream effects of not putting money into infrastructure and resiliency.
“But when the disaster hit, funding at that point is not the issue,” he said. “When the disaster hits, you fund it.”
Ranking Member Richard Blumenthal stressed the importance of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which provides reimbursement to fire departments and mutual aid operations. Under the Trump administration, FEMA’s budget has been thinned.
The Connecticut Democrat said this is “delaying the funding that communities are due to recover those individuals who’ve been struck with disaster, but also to make them more resilient.”
Mr. Trump turned up the heat on the long-lasting partisan feud over the Palisades fire via executive order.
“This marked one of the greatest failures of elected political leadership in American history, from enabling the wildfires to failing to manage them, and it continues today with the abject failure to rebuild,” Mr. Trump wrote in the order.
He directed his administration to develop regulations to preempt state and local permitting requirements that “have unduly impeded the timely use of Federal emergency-relief funds.”
Mr. Trump’s order prompted a sharp response from California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who both classified it as a meaningless political stunt.
