In the months following the Palisades Fire, many of those who had lost their homes anxiously awaited the Los Angeles Fire Department's after-action report, which was expected to provide a frank assessment of the agency's handling of the disaster.
A first draft was completed in August, possibly earlier.
And then the eliminations and other changes began, behind closed doors, in what amounted to an effort to downplay the failures of the city and LAFD leadership in preparing for and fighting the Jan. 7 fire, which killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes, records obtained by The Times show.
In one case, LAFD officials removed language that said the decision to not fully staff and pre-deploy all available crews and engines ahead of the extreme wind forecast “did not align” with department policy and procedures during red flag days.
Instead, the final report said the number of engine companies deployed before the fire “went beyond the LAFD's standard pre-deployment matrix.”
Another deleted passage from the report said some crews waited more than an hour for a task on the day of the fire. A section on “failures” was renamed “top challenges” and an item that said crews and leaders had violated national guidelines on how to prevent firefighter deaths and injuries was removed.
Other changes to the report, which was overseen by then-interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva, similarly seemed designed to soften its impact and burnish the Fire Department's image. Two drafts contain notes written in the margins, including a suggestion to replace the cover image, which showed burning palm trees against an orange sky, with a “positive” one, such as “firefighters on the front lines,” the note said. The cover of the final report shows the LAFD seal.
The Times obtained seven drafts of the report through the state's Public Records Act. Only three of those drafts are marked with dates: two versions are dated August 25, and there is one draft from October 6, two days before the LAFD released the final report to the public.
No names are attached to the editions. It is unclear whether the names were in the original documents and whether they had been redacted in drafts provided to The Times.
The deletions and revisions are likely to deepen concerns about the LAFD's ability to recognize its mistakes before and during the fire and avoid repeating them in the future. Victims of the Palisades Fire have already expressed outrage over unanswered questions and conflicting information about the LAFD's preparations following the dangerous weather forecast, including how firefighters handled a smaller fire on New Year's Day, called the Lachman Fire, that reignited into the massive Palisades Fire six days later.
Some drafts described an LAFD duty captain calling Fire Station 23 in Palisades on January 7 to report that “the Lachman fire started again,” indicating the captain's belief that the Palisades fire was caused by a reignition of the previous fire.
The reference was removed in a draft and later restored in the public version, which otherwise only contains a brief mention of the earlier fire. Some have said that the after-action report's failure to thoroughly examine the Lachman Fire reignite was designed to shield LAFD leaders and Mayor Karen Bass's administration from criticism and accountability.
Weeks after the report was published, The Times reported that a battalion chief ordered firefighters to roll up their hoses and leave the burned area on January 2, even though they had complained that the ground was still burning and the rocks were still hot to the touch. Another battalion chief assigned to the LAFD's risk management section knew about the complaints for months, but the department kept that information out of the after-action report.
After the Times report, Bass asked Villanueva to “thoroughly investigate” the LAFD's errors in putting out the Lachman fire, which federal authorities say was intentionally set.
“A complete understanding of the response to the Lachman Fire is essential for an accurate account of what occurred during the January wildfires,” Bass wrote.
Fire Chief Jaime Moore, who started on the job last month, is tasked with commissioning the independent investigation Bass requested.
The LAFD did not answer detailed questions from the Times about the revised drafts, including questions about why material about the reignition was removed and then returned. Villanueva did not respond to a request for comment.
A spokesman for Bass said his office did not demand changes to the drafts and only asked the LAFD to confirm the accuracy of elements such as how the weather and the department's budget played a role in the disaster.
“The report was written and edited by the Fire Department,” spokeswoman Clara Karger said in an email. “We didn't redline, we didn't review every page and we didn't review every draft of the report. We didn't discuss the Lachman fire because it wasn't part of the report.”
Genethia Hudley Hayes, chairwoman of the Board of Fire Commissioners, told The Times that she reviewed a hard copy of a “working document” about a week before the final report was made public. He said he expressed concern to Villanueva and the city attorney's office about the possibility that the “material findings” were or would be changed. She also said she consulted a private attorney about her “obligations” as a commissioner overseeing LAFD operations, although that conversation “had nothing to do with the after-action report.”
Hudley Hayes said he noticed only minor differences between the final report and the draft he reviewed. For example, he said, “mistakes” were changed to “challenges” and firefighters' names were removed.
“I was completely fine with that,” he said. “As far as I'm concerned, everything I read in the final report did not confuse anything in any way.”
He reiterated his position that an examination of missteps during the Lachman fire did not belong in the after-action report, a view not shared by former LAFD chiefs interviewed by The Times.
“The after-action report should have gone back to Dec. 31,” said former LAFD Battalion Chief Rick Crawford, who retired from the agency last year and is now emergency and crisis management coordinator for the U.S. Capitol. “There are significant gaps in this after-action report.”
Former LAFD assistant. Chief Patrick Butler, who is now chief of the Redondo Beach Fire Department, agreed that the Lachman fire should have been addressed in the report and said the redactions were “a deliberate effort to hide the truth and cover up the facts.”
He said the removal of the reference to LAFD violations of the national Standard Fire Fighting Orders and Surveillance was a “serious issue” because they were “written in the blood” of firefighters killed in the line of duty. Without citing national guidelines, the final report said the extraordinary nature of the Palisades fire “occasionally caused officers and firefighters to think and operate beyond standard safety protocols.”
The final after-action report does not mention that a person called authorities to report seeing smoke in the area on January 3. The LAFD has since provided conflicting information about how it responded to that call.
Villanueva told The Times in October that firefighters returned to the burned area and “cold traced” once again, meaning they used their hands to feel the heat and dug out hot spots. But records showed they cleared the call within 34 minutes.
Firefighters did not respond to The Times' questions about the discrepancy. In an emailed statement this week, the LAFD said crews had used remote cameras, walked around the fire scene and used a 20-foot extension ladder to access a fenced area, but saw no smoke or fire.
“After an extensive investigation, it was determined that the incident was a false alarm,” the statement said.
The most significant changes in the various versions of the after-action report involved the LAFD's deployment decisions before the fire, as wind warnings became increasingly severe.
In a series of reports earlier this year, The Times found that top LAFD officials decided not to staff dozens of available engines that could have been previously deployed to the Palisades and other areas marked as high risk, as it had done in the past.
One draft contained a passage in the “failures” section about what the LAFD could have done: “If the Department had adequately augmented all available resources as it did in previous years in preparation for the weather event, the Department would have been required to draw down members for all available vacant positions through voluntary overtime, which would have allowed all remaining resources to be staffed and available for augmentation, pre-deployment, and pre-positioning.” The draft said the decision was an attempt to be “fiscally responsible” that went against department policy and procedures.
That language was absent from the final report, which said the LAFD “balanced fiscal responsibility with adequate preparation for anticipated weather and fire behavior following the LAFD pre-deployment matrix.”
Even with the deletions, the published report presented a harsh criticism of the LAFD's performance during the Palisades fire, pointing to a disorganized response, communication breakdowns and chiefs who did not understand their roles. The report found that senior commanders lacked fundamental knowledge of wildland firefighting tactics, including “basic firefighting techniques.”
An error in the procedures caused only a third of the State-financed resources that were available for prepositioning in high-risk areas to be used, according to the report. And when the fire broke out on the morning of January 7, the initial dispatch requested only seven engine companies, when weather conditions required 27.
There was confusion among firefighters about which radio channel to use. The report said three Los Angeles County engines showed up within the first hour, requested an assignment, and received no response. Four other LAFD engines waited 20 minutes without an assignment.
In the early afternoon, the parking area, where the engines were searched, was engulfed by fire.
The report made 42 recommendations, ranging from establishing better communication channels to more training. In a television interview this month, Moore said the LAFD has adopted about three-quarters of them.
