Additionally, new LAFD whistleblower testimony alleges Palisades fire wasn’t fully out before it roared back and incinerated the city.
Posted by Leslie Eastman
We are rapidly approaching the first anniversary of the Los Angeles area wildfires that destroyed Pacific Palisades and Altadena.
As I reported recently, it appears that three-quarters of Pacific Palisades and two-thirds of Altadena residents remain in temporary housing. Court cases for compensation and identifying the causes and contributing factors are also continuing.
Now, attorneys for Palisades fire victims are moving to question Los Angeles firefighters under oath to explore claims that a California State Parks official limited how the department responded to an earlier blaze, which later reignited into the catastrophic firestorm that destroyed thousands of homes. This is in response to accusations that the official was concerned about…”native plant species“.
Alexander “Trey” Robertson, one of the attorneys who filed the complaint against the state, told The Times that a fire official up on the Lachman burn scar Jan. 1 alleged that a California State Parks representative told them “they couldn’t bring a bulldozer in to cut a line around the fire and they could not do mop-up with their hand tools, dig up around any native plant species.”
“They basically put plants over people and wouldn’t let the firefighters attempt to fully mop up this fire.”
…The attorneys are highlighting information they received from a Palisades fire victim, reality television personality Spencer Pratt, who says a fire battalion chief told him earlier this month that a representative of California State Parks showed firefighters maps of native species and prohibited firefighters from using a bulldozer to cut a line around the fire. Pratt confirmed the claim in an interview with The Times, and the battalion chief did not respond to a request for comment.
Robertson said his legal team also interviewed an L.A. firefighter who was on the burn scar on the morning of Jan. 2, who said a battalion chief told him to roll up hoses and leave. The firefighter said he saw a state park representative on scene, though he did not speak to the person and had no information about whether the person influenced mop-up operations.
The state park in question is Topanga State Park. If the name seems familiar to Legal Insurrection readers in the context of the Palisades fire, it’s because I previously noted the issue the LA Department of Water and Power (LADWP) faced when it began replacing nearly 100-year-old power line poles and fire-hardening the region that includes Topanga State Park.
As I reported shortly after the wildfire broke out this January, the project was halted within days by conservationists outraged that federally endangered Braunton’s milkvetch plants.
[A]fter an amateur botanist hiking through the park during the work saw the harm done to some of the park’s Braunton’s milkvetch — a flowering shrub with only a few thousand specimens remaining in the wild — and complained, the project was completely halted, Courthouse News Service reported.
Instead of fire-hardening the park, the city — which the state said had undertaken the work without proper permitting — ended up paying $2 million in fines and was ordered by the California Coastal Commission to reverse the whole project and replant the rare herb.
That work saved about 200 Braunton’s milkvetch plants — almost all of which have now likely been torched in the wildfires that consumed Topanga Canyon, along with nearly 24,000 acres (37 square miles) of some of LA’s most sought-after real estate.
Furthermore, new whistleblower accounts and internal firefighter text messages indicate the deadly Palisades fire may never have been fully extinguished, and that warnings about lingering hot spots detected on January 2 were disregarded by Los Angeles Fire Department leadership.
Investigations by the LA Times and whistleblower intimidation claims have led to a federal grand jury issuing subpoenas to the LAFD seeking communications, text messages, and operational logs from Jan. 1–7, focusing on decisions made in the field and the accuracy of the department’s later reporting.
…Timeline: Firefighter Texts, LAFD Actions and Statements
(Firefighter texts in italics)
…January 3–6: Smoldering period, no crews at site despite shifting wind forecasts.
“Hope that hillside stays quiet.”
“That spot was not cold.”
“Wind forecast looks nasty.”
LAFD: No public statements; earlier fire considered resolved.
Jan 7: Fire Reignites, Becomes Palisades Fire
Event: Strong winds; fire erupts in same burn area.
“It’s the same area—it re-lit.”
“Told them it wasn’t cold.”
“How did this get past the supervisors?”
“We left it hot. Now look.”
You just can’t make this stuff up a perfect example of incompetent non transparent government.
I call it “opaque Oversite”.
Or would that be oversite oversight in this instance?
(pwobably just my spelling error)
Yes. Shortly after the flare up, hydrants went dry but multiple agencies have covered their asses in the linked report. There was no mention of the original arson event that was left prematurely to smolder.
https://calepa.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Final-clean-Palisades-Fire-and-Water-Supply-Analysis.pdf
Another example of the government flack overruling the actual professionals, like Congress screwing up Vietnam.
West Coast-Messed Coast…
(With apologies to Anthony and all my relatives and friends there.)
Clearly the complainant was not an environmentalist. if he/she actually understood the environment there, that person would understand the need to ensure the fire was OUT!
There are far too many environmental idiots out there with good intentions, but not a clue as to how the world actually works.
“Did CA Park Official of Limit Firefighting Efforts…”
Does not compute.
Depends on your meaning of “of.”
Well, the headline doesn’t make sense as written.
Thanks Bill.
Exactly. What in the name of Sweet Fannie Adams is an “Official of Limit”? This garbage needs to stop. If there is one thing I cannot stand in this world, it is incompetent headline writing.
My guess is that “of” wasn’t supposed to be there. But heck, what do I know?
Conditions were not unusual. We often have very dry conditions and high winds especially near ranges of hills and or mountains. What was almost criminal was how they were so totally unprepaired for what happened especially considering the lack of water in hydrants and the empty backup water supply. It is as if they did this on purpose.
The word “almost” is way to kind.
The conditions there are known for centuries.
This was literally a doctor who forgot the most basic skills to someone whose suffocating on the back or use the Heimlich Manoeuvre.
On top of that I think that most houses could have been saved with the use of drones even when hydrants are empty, as those wealthier places have tons of swimming pools.
As the houses don’t start to burn instantly but are results of ember and small hot spots that grow bigger,
a fleet of drones could have saved most homes by dropping pool water here and there.
Considering how capable drones have become during the Ukraine conflict
they could be very useful in fighting fire.
They can’t fight big fires but can prevent them from spreading and to save houses.
They have been doing this on purpose, now Palisades is in endgame, no one is being allowed to rebuild, once they hit bankruptcy they will sell at pennies on the dollar to developers such as Blackrock and Newsom will get his cut plus donations for his Presidential campaign.
Those milk vetch plants need either fire or to be ‘roughed up’ by being trampled by animals or eaten by them to later poo out their seeds in order to disperse them so new plants can grow.
Bulldozing them while replacing old rotten power poles or making fire breaks would be helping ensure propagation of the species.
The environmentalists seeking to prevent any damage to the plants were actually harming their continued existence. What they should be doing is harvesting seeds then scattering them across the area.
But noooo. That’s not “natural”. Can’t do it. Same BS as with an extremophile species of fish found in one or two hot spring ponds in Death Valley. Environmentalists tend to get downright hostile when the idea of taking some of the fish to other ponds in the area is brought up. If where they exist now goes dry, the species goes *poof*. Why not take action to make sure it has a better chance of long term survival? IIRC there are ponds without any life that the fish would be detrimental to. It would be a project to duplicate the whole life environment the fish are currently in.
That’s the way of it with isolated species that live in an exceptional micro environment. They survive due to local conditions staying close to what they are adapted to. In South America there are unique species that live within a short distance of one waterfall. The humidity from the spray is what they depend on. One drought and they die.
They preach evolution, how species adapt to survive – then are determined to stop the process when it’s closing in on such niche species that cannot survive natural change to their micro environment. Every species cannot be as adaptable as humans, or those $^#% starlings.
So they burned all the native plants. That was their big plan, burn all the native plants? Because that is what they did, and the non-native plants came back faster and choked out the native plants. So, is their new big plan to burn it all again? Because the native plants have been choked out, just like happens every time there is a massive fire, and the non-native plants grow back faster and choke out the native plants, then die off and create yet more fuel load because non-native plants are not suited to growing in that climate. I am curious, who is Newsom going to pay to start the next fire?
Break out the lie detectors.
Reminds me the Haz-Mat training we had to do every (I think it was) two years. (I’m retired from a job were we handled large amounts of hazardous materials.)
In one of the last trainings we were told that the latest priorities in a large spill/release situation were:
Life
Environment
Property
We had a follow up at the fire station that was out first responders.
The chief was surprised by that. For them it was:
Life
Property
Environment
But that was in Ohio, not California.
(Can you imagine the fire department needing to build dikes to contain the runoff to protect “the environment” before actually saving your house?)
I understand there are plenty of dikes in California. (:-))
Here in NC even from the official training we get Life, Property, Environment.
A California Flora by Munz and Keck lists nearly 300 species of milkvetch (Austragalus spp.) in CA, and notes there are 400 in NA and ~2,000 in the genus worldwide. Braunton’s milkvetch (A. Brauntonii) isn’t much different than a hundred or more chaparral milkvetch species, other than it’s one of few dozen with purple flowers. There is no DNA evidence that these are true species, that they don’t cross and are merely varieties of the same species. The taxonomy splitters have long desired recognition for finding new species, whereas DNA analysis is relatively new.
In any case, fake species or not, Braunton’s milkvetch is fire-adapted, resprouts from deep roots, has fire resistant seeds, and favors burned over areas (like most chaparral). You can burn the heck out of it, and it keeps coming back. The idea that A. Brauntonii is some weak and pathetic species about to expire from human contact is crapastic nonsense perped by bleeding heart liberals with a political agenda based on anti-humanism.
What many don’t know, or refuse to accept, is that weak and pathetic girly men and frustrated mannish women in thrall to botany departments at super lib colleges want to burn down California out of sheer spite. And amazingly, they’ve been hugely successful at it in the last few decades.
But, but, but, it was “Climate Change” that made the fires happen and made them worse than anything.
Don’t you read the media reports?
/sarc (in case it is needed)
This just in… the state report on the empty 117M gallon Santa Ynez Reservoir. The lack of water had no impact on the fire. I guess Gruesome and Bass believe that you can’t use water to fight fires.