After Palisades fires, Los Angeles promises to increase its workforce in the event of a high-risk fire

Los Angeles firefighters will remain on duty for an extra shift during red flag weather warnings as part of a mandatory protocol instituted after top fire officials failed to pre-deploy engines at Pacific Palisades ahead of the devastating Jan. 7 fire.

Mayor Karen Bass’ announcement comes after the fire department released a much-anticipated after-action report, revealing firefighters were hampered by an ineffective call-back process, as well as poor communication, inexperienced leadership and a lack of resources.

The release of the 70-page report, and Bass’s outline of changes the department made in accordance with the report, followed federal prosecutors’ arrest and charging of a 29-year-old Uber driver with intentionally starting a fire on Jan. 1 that later turned into the Palisades Fire.

City officials said in August that, at the request of federal authorities, they were waiting to release their own report until the federal investigation into the causes of the fire was complete.

A Times investigation published a week after the fire found that firefighters did not deploy any engines to the Palisades before the flames erupted, despite warnings of severe weather. Authorities also did not require firefighters to stay for an extra shift.

In preparing for the winds, officials opted to equip only five of the more than 40 engines available to supplement the regular firefighting force. According to the after-action report, the firefighters who returned voluntarily were only able to intervene on three engines.

The additional engines could have been prepositioned in the Palisades and elsewhere, as had been done in the past during similar weather conditions.

The LAFD report says that at 8 a.m. on the morning of the fire — about two hours before the flames broke out — firefighters decided to pre-deploy several additional engines, but none were sent to the Palisades.

During the first battle against the flames, the report said, most firefighters worked for more than 36 hours without rest.

In an interview Wednesday, Acting Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva referenced a more robust pre-deployment model and said he had implemented leadership changes.

In addition to increased training for firefighters, the fire department is improving its fire preparedness, which includes “putting resources in place sooner, giving every officer early access to briefings and holding tactical meetings more often,” Bass said in his list of changes related to the report.

“The decisions they made that day were adequate, I believe, in their decision-making matrix. (…) Now, because of that, and because I arrived and was able to see everything from a bird’s eye view, things had to be changed,” Villanueva said. “So I made sure that our deployment model is resource heavy, so that everyone is placed in strategic areas to cover the city.”

In February, Bass removed Kristin Crowley, who was chief during the fire, and replaced her with Villanueva.

Bass had criticized Crowley’s decisions before the deployment and complained that Crowley only contacted her after the fire broke out.

“We know that 1,000 firefighters who may have been on duty the morning the fires broke out were sent home on the watch of Chief Crowley,” Bass said in a Feb. 21 statement announcing Crowley’s firing.

Crowley, who still works for the fire department at a lower rank, appealed his demotion and filed a lawsuit against the city, alleging that Bass “orchestrated a campaign of misinformation, defamation and retaliation” to protect his political image.

Crowley and other top fire officials said at the time that they were doing the best they could with the budget and resources they had, also saying that more would not have made a difference against such a fierce wind-fueled fire.

Bass, who drew heavy criticism for making a diplomatic trip to Ghana when the fire broke out, said the fire department had made 19 leadership changes, including the appointment of Villanueva, and was looking for a permanent leader.

“It is critical that we learn from what was effective, like the relentless heroism of the firefighters who responded to the fire, and the challenges we faced in order to build a stronger emergency response system to prepare for whatever may come our way,” Bass said in his statement.

The mayor and other key city leaders will be “explicitly briefed by the LAFD as soon as possible and kept informed at all times during… any crisis,” she said.

The fire department’s report said several senior fire officials “had limited, if any, experience in handling an incident of such complexity.”

“Some were unfamiliar with their command and staff roles and reverted to prior knowledge at lower ranks, resulting in key command and staff positions remaining vacant and associated tasks neglected,” the report said.

The Palisades Fire, which broke out at 10:30 a.m. on Jan. 7, was one of the costliest and most destructive disasters in the city’s history, destroying thousands of homes and killing 12 people.

Federal investigators announced Wednesday that the Jan. 7 fire was a so-called legacy of the Jan. 1 blaze, which continued to smolder and burn underground after firefighters thought they had extinguished it. Investigators said high winds six days later caused an underground fire to start and spread to the surface, which became one of the costliest and most destructive disasters in the city’s history.

As residents desperately fled the flames, they found themselves stranded on blocked roads and many abandoned their cars. The report noted a delay in communicating evacuation orders, which led to spontaneous evacuations without structured traffic control, forcing people to block roads to the fire.

Bass said the department is working on new evacuation drills with software, Genasys Protect, that will aid in “proper and effective civil evacuation.”