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About 30 minutes after the Palisades fire started on Tuesday, the firefighters’ radio crackled: the flames were coming from a familiar sliver of a mountain ridge.
“The foot of the fire started real close to where the last fire was on New Year’s Eve,” said a Los Angeles County firefighter, according to a Washington Post review of archived radio transmissions.
“It looks like it’s going to make a good run,” one chimed into the dispatch.
The Post’s analysis of photos, videos, satellite imagery and radio communications, plus interviews with witnesses, offers new evidence that the Palisades fire started in the area where firefighters had spent hours using helicopters to knock down a blaze six days earlier.
Firefighters were seen monitoring the Palisades fire over the weekend, as it spread near the Mandeville Canyon neighbourhood and Encino. Photo / AFP
Investigators from state and federal agencies descended on this area in recent days, interviewing residents and looking for evidence – including around the burn scar of the New Year’s Eve fire – of what sparked the fire.
The Post’s analysis showed the new fire started in the vicinity of the old fire, raising the possibility the New Year’s Eve fire was reignited, which could occur in windy conditions, experts said.
Residents also told the Post and investigators on scene that firefighters’ response on Tuesday was much slower than on New Year’s Eve – a view confirmed by radio transmissions.
From Colorado to California to Hawaii, flare-ups of previous fires, known as reignition, have been the cause of some of the nation’s most catastrophic and deadly wildfires. This past summer, California officials co-ordinated a social media campaign to warn residents that terrain scorched but seemingly extinguished can spawn deadly new fires for weeks after the old ones appear to have gone out because fire can smoulder almost undetected under ground or inside wood.
Despite that – and warnings of an intense and dangerous wind event last week – a Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman told the Post on Friday it was not the department’s practice to maintain patrols of past fire sites, even for a few days after fires had gone cold.
“We know that fires rekindle and transition from smouldering to flaming,” said Michael Gollner, a professor of mechanical engineering and fire scientist at the University of California at Berkeley who reviewed the Post’s materials. “It’s certainly possible that something from that previous fire, within a week, had rekindled and caused the ignition.”
Expensive implications
Investigators are only beginning to hunt for the cause of the Palisades fire, the first and largest of what became a terrifying, days-long series of firestorms that would touch nearly every corner of the sprawling Los Angeles region.
On Saturday, the Palisades fire jumped a containment line and triggered new evacuations as authorities reported the death toll citywide had risen to 16 people and more than 12,000 homes had burned. With speculation ranging from downed power equipment to arson, identifying the origins of the fires will have huge and possibly expensive implications for the state and how it manages growing wildfire risks.
The Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (LAFD) is taking the lead on the investigation, officials said. In response to questions about reignition as a possible cause, the LAFD said, “This is an ongoing, active investigation and the team will not comment on an ongoing investigation.”
From the start of the fire on Tuesday, authorities have known the smoke began in a stretch of Temescal Ridge in the Santa Monica Mountains where the earlier fire, believed by residents to have been sparked by fireworks, occurred.
The Post identified the burn scar of the New Year’s Eve fire using false-colour satellite imagery taken before and after the fire. The technique tracks changes to vegetation in satellite imagery. Healthy plant cover appears red, while the scorched ground appears blue to brown.
In addition, satellite imagery taken on Tuesday at 10.45am, about 20 minutes after videos show the Palisades fire began, indicates the origin of the smoke overlapped with the burn scar from the New Year’s Eve fire. Smoke extends in the direction of the wind, to the south, away from the previously burned area.
Conspiracy theories
The question of what caused the fire has weighed on the minds of many who have lost their homes, while also fuelling conspiracy theories online. Residents and business owners are now considering lawsuits, seeking who might be to blame for damages and economic losses that Wells Fargo estimates could range from US$60 billion to US$130b $107b-$233b). Investigators from local, state and federal agencies have been combing the site of the fire, speaking with people who stayed behind.
Officials said determining the cause could take weeks or months. On Friday, fire officials, arson investigators, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the FBI converged in the hillside neighbourhoods near the Skull Rock Trailhead, close to the site of the earlier fire. ATF officials knocked on the doors of the powerless, pink-retardant-covered homes that were still standing, asking residents about what they saw, what they thought might have caused it.
In one conversation, a resident who was cleaning ash out of his home told a Post reporter and an ATF officer who knocked on the door that this disaster was “started by idiots” on New Year’s Eve. It happens every year, said the resident, who did not want to be named. People go up at night and party when they’re not supposed to. His family heard fireworks popping off and noticed a fire had started about 12.20am, he said.
“You got to know better,” he said, his voice muffled through a mask. “It’s dry. There’s no precipitation. I don’t know if you’ve ever been camping, but when you go camping and put a fire out, that doesn’t mean that it’s not hot below. Then the Santa Anas came on Monday, and that’s what started, that’s what reignited the fire.”
A firefighting helicopter drops water as the Palisades fire grows near the Mandeville Canyon neighbourhood and Encino, California. Photo / AFP
The New Year’s Eve fire
Shortly after midnight on January 1, firefighters responded to the fire northeast of the Pacific Palisades. It initially covered about 2ha of heavy brush and had a slow rate of spread. Winds were relatively light and helicopters were able to make water drops. Four camp crews were dispatched and firefighters were in place to defend at least one home.
Still, with almost ideal conditions, it took about four hours to contain the fire. At 4.46am, the Los Angeles Fire Department reported the fire was contained and mop-up operations would continue “to ensure no flare-ups”.
Two experts who reviewed the Post’s visual evidence said it was possible the remnants of the New Year’s Eve fire could have reignited, though it was not definitive.
“The evidence you have here indicates that it is at least conceivable that remnants from the earlier Lachman fire gave rise to the Palisades fire,” Jacob Bendix, a professor emeritus of geography and the environment at Syracuse University, said by email. “While the passage of time reduces the probability of restarting, the elapsed time does not make it unrealistic, especially in the absence of intervening precipitation.”
Bendix noted he published a paper in 2018 indicating that a fire could smoulder for up to 10 days before being reignited by winds.
It is typical for weather flare-ups after a fire to cause rekindling, Gollner said, but he agreed it’s hard to make a determination without further investigation into how much fuel remained on the site after the New Year’s Eve fire or other external factors.
A 3ha fire is sizeable, fire experts said, and it’s hard to ensure fires are completely cold. That often requires firefighters to go over the area by hand – difficult for fire departments that are often understaffed and responding to many incidents and emergencies.
On Tuesday morning, with winds topping 128km/h), LA firefighters immediately saw the danger when they reached the patch of scarred mountainside from the previous fire: they called in again for air support and estimated structures could be threatened within 20 minutes.
“It is pushing directly toward Palisades. This thing’s got a wide path to travel already,” a firefighter called in.
Michel Valentine, who owns two homes in the neighbourhood right by the fire’s origin, one in Via Pacifica and one in Via La Costa, was home for both fires. The response to the New Year’s incident was swift and impressive, he said. Sirens blared up the street, firefighters jumped out of their trucks and made their way through the thick brush, breaking down his gate and attacking the fire with “hoses and hand crews and men coming in these tractor vans to do a perimeter”, he said.
Almost a week later, his wife was up on the hill walking their dog and saw “a huge plume of smoke being fanned by the wind”, he said. She thinks she was one of the first people to call 911, at 10.15am. Valentine, a former district attorney for Los Angeles, said he also called about 10.45am when he “saw smoke coming from same place”, but the line was busy. And then he waited.
According to radio traffic, LAFD crews were at almost the same time responding to two incidents in other parts of the city. Both said they would send resources when they could.
At 10.33, firefighters responded, saying they saw the “camera show smoke, showing smoke” from “the second brush in the Palisades” and they “we’re going to divert”.
Several minutes later, an official fighting a small brush fire in West Hollywood told dispatch: “We’re working real hard to spare as many resources we can.”
About the same time, a helicopter carrying water reported it could not respond because of the wind.
In Valentine’s recollection, the fire was ripping for about 45 minutes when he saw a helicopter go over it, but it didn’t have water.
For the next 10 minutes or so, firefighters called back and forth, asking who was responding, who was on scene:
“LA from City Fire Four … do you have ground resources up at the Palisades yet?”
Answer: “Fire Four LA. Standby. We’re still showing en route.”
“Currently, it’s a 10-acre brush fire and heavy fuel on top of a ridgeline,” an official said at 10.48am. “It is 100% in alignment with the wind. It has the potential for a few hundred-plus acres in the next 20 minutes. We have a potential for structures being threatened in the next 20 minutes.”
Radio traffic records show fire trucks were still en route to the fire 25 minutes after it ignited.
“For the longest time, I didn’t see any police, firefighters, not on the ground or in the air,” Valentine said. “I was disappointed because the second fire was moving so fast, and there was no one there.”
Standing outside about 11.30 or 11.45am, Valentine said, he saw the first fire trucks drive up to his neighbourhood. But they “took a look at the street and made a u-turn and left because the fire had extended far into the hillside and kept travelling”.
According to radio traffic, first responders arrived in the Pacific Palisades shortly before 11am and were focused on the foot of the fire, near Palisades Drive.
By 5pm, the fire, spurred by wind-driven embers that were travelling up to 3km away, had spread across most of the community, threatening Valentine’s mother’s and sister’s homes, as well as his own.
“It just got out of their control real quick,” he said.
On Friday morning, a Post reporter hiked up to the New Year’s burn footprint, now enveloped in the sweeping scar that covers the scorched mountain. What’s left of the shrubs and other vegetation that once covered the ridges and canyons is black and grey and dead, with smoke drifting over the seared landscape.
Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) equipment stretches across a part of the Santa Monica Mountains near the origin of the fire. Unlike many other utilities, the LADWP does not shut off power to customers during dangerous winds, stating in its wildfire mitigation plan that it “determined that the adverse impact on health, safety, and quality of life of its customers outweighs the perceived benefits derived from pre-emptive power shut-offs”.
That led some residents and lawyers to speculate that burned equipment near the start of the fire may have had a role in causing the disaster, as has power equipment in many fires. But in this case, the LADWP told the Post the lines had been de-energised for five years.
As a Post reporter walked up and down the ridge, workers from the LADWP and PG&E arrived to assess what remained of the infrastructure. Then severalmber of officials from the fire department and other investigators showed up, with some driving up the trail in ATVs. LA Fire Department arson investigators, members of ATF and the FBI were also driving around the neighbourhoods for most of the day.
Early on, after the fire started, LA Fire Captain Adam VanGerpen said in televised interviews that it began in a “backyard” and spread up a ridgeline, where erratic winds and embers “pushed this throughout all of Palisades”.
In an interview on Friday, VanGerpen said he had been mistaken. His initial description was based on the first dispatch communications to responding firefighters, and conditions on the ground turned out to be more dire when firefighters arrived.
VanGerpen said his department remains focused on fighting the active fires across the region and would shift to investigating their origins once they’re contained.
Asked whether the LAFD had left firefighters on patrol in the area of the New Year’s Eve fire to watch for flare-ups, VanGerpen said that would not have been standard practice – especially a week after the initial fire. Crews “stay on site until a site is cold”, he said.
Concerned by the lack of firefighters in his neighbourhood, Valentine stayed put. About 7pm on Tuesday, he ran to check on the house he grew up in. Parts of it were on fire. He grabbed a garden hose and got to work.
He then turned around and hiked home up Lachman Lane. He passed about 30 homes that were on fire, he recalled, and there “was no one around”. His clothes became pitted with burn holes and his hair was singed.
When he got back, his windows were on fire. Valentine had grabbed a trash can from the bathroom and filled it up from the sink, running back and forth so many times he lost count, he said. He finally extinguished them. For the next few hours, he wet down his neighbours’ homes with a bucket, suffering burns and falling on a ladder, injuring his back.
“I kept doing it and put out fires there and there, and all night there, I would hear and see explosions,” he said on Friday night.
Eventually, the fire came for him again. He watched his other home in Via la Costa go up in flames.
He’s just now starting to feel the physical wounds, as well as everything else. He feels “fooled”.
“I was lulled into this sense of security,” he said. “The first fire didn’t affect me and it started in the same place. The first one was extinguished so quickly, and I thought the same was going to happen to this one, but I was wrong.”
