One Year After The La Fires, Survivors' Big Question: Where's The Accountability?

From a leather chair in her official residence last fall, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass shook hands with a podcast host at the end of their hourlong interview. Unaware she was still being recorded, Bass kept talking about the city and county’s response to the massive wildfires that devastated the region.

“Both sides botched it,” Bass said.

It was a rare — and unintentional — moment of blunt, unvarnished talk that fire survivors say has been maddeningly absent since twin blazes killed 31 people and destroyed 13,000 homes across the region one year ago.

Despite millions of dollars being spent on official reports published in the fires’ aftermath, essential questions about what happened leading up to and during the disasters remain unresolved. Why hadn’t a prior blaze that rekindled into an inferno been extinguished days before? And why didn’t many residents receive evacuation orders until they had been under threat for hours?

The lack of clear answers has become a political liability for local elected officials, especially Bass who is up for reelection this year and whose fire response is seen as her greatest vulnerability.

Residents in Pacific Palisades and Altadena, the two communities that suffered the greatest losses in the fires, are planning protests today to mark the anniversary of the conflagrations. In the nationally televised Rose Parade last week, Altadena residents in a float celebrating their community unfurled a sign demanding a new investigation.

“Without real accountability, real change, there’s no way to move forward,” said Shawna Dawson Beer, an Altadena community leader who lost her home in the fire and is helping arrange the protests. “How can anyone be confident in their rebuild or trust that this isn’t gonna happen again?”

Bone-dry brush combined with hurricane-force winds early on Jan. 7 last year to set the stage for trouble. The Palisades fire began mid-morning, racing down from the hills above the tony neighborhood overlooking the Pacific. About seven hours later, the Eaton fire ignited 35 miles away in the San Gabriel Valley and marched from the foothills into Altadena, stretching fire fighting resources further. Day turned to night, and limited visibility and high winds prevented helicopters from taking to the air to fight.

Yet despite the extreme conditions, critical decisions made before and during the fires worsened the disasters.

Six days earlier, an arsonist started a small blaze in the Palisades known as the Lachman fire. The Los Angeles Fire Department believed it had extinguished the fire, but investigators later determined it remained burning underground and reignited to become the inferno on Jan. 7.

In Altadena, signs of flames appeared in the western side of the community more than four hours before emergency officials issued evacuation orders there. All but one of the 19 people who died in the Eaton fire had been in the part of Altadena that received late evacuation orders, also the neighborhood’s historically Black section. The likely cause of the fire was a dormant electrical transmission line owned by Southern California Edison.

In the wake of the blazes, multiple public agencies commissioned reports designed to get to the bottom of the fires’ origins and their decisions. Los Angeles County paid $1.9 million to McChrystal Group, a Virginia-based consulting firm founded by retired U.S. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal. When its 132-page report was released in September, County Supervisors Kathryn Barger and Lindsey Horvath, who represent Altadena and Pacific Palisades respectively, praised the effort as a vital step toward accountability.

But the report provided few details on why the evacuation orders came so late in Altadena and who was responsible. Wildfire survivors immediately erupted in protest. Within days, Barger backtracked, joining other county officials and residents in calling the report inadequate.

Fire leaders in the city of Los Angeles initially insisted that they had fully extinguished the Lachman fire. But firefighters on site complained the ground was still smoldering before they were ordered to leave the area the next day, according to the Los Angeles Times. The Times also reported that the city’s own 70-page after-action report went through numerous drafts that minimized the role of the earlier fire and otherwise softened criticisms of departmental actions, including that it did not predeploy firefighters and engines to the Palisades despite the fire threat. The changes caused the report’s lead author, a LAFD battalion chief, to disavow the document, calling it “highly unprofessional.”

Sue Kohl, a longtime Pacific Palisades resident whose home was destroyed in the fire, compared the continued obfuscation and finger pointing among government agencies to behavior on a grammar school playground.

“Your house is burned down, and your friends have all scattered and your town is gone,” said Kohl, who serves as chair of the community council. “That’s not what anyone wants to hear.”

Animosity among fire survivors over the lack of answers is growing, she said.

“Before you were traumatized, horribly upset and depressed,” Kohl said. “At this point in time a year later, you’ve got all that — plus a lot of anger.”

Data collected by the Department of Angels, a nonprofit formed to support L.A. fire victims, shows a sharp increase in dissatisfaction with the government response. In a February survey, about 17% of people directly affected by the fires reported having negative experiences with local and state government. In a follow-up survey released this week, more than half of survivors reported dissatisfaction.

Already, the erosion of trust has had consequences. A state senator abandoned legislation over the summer for a new public agency to oversee and raise funds for the recovery after residents revolted at giving local officials broader power. No similar master plan to organize or pay for rebuilding Los Angeles has emerged since.

Bass, who declined an interview request from POLITICO, has called reports surrounding the Lachman fire “tremendously alarming” and ordered a subsequent investigation into the department’s actions. A spokesperson has said the mayor’s office did not demand changes to the LAFD report and that the administration is only interested in the truth.

Barger has also requested an additional investigation from county fire officials into the late evacuation orders. She said she supported any inquiry that would shed light on decisionmaking from all agencies involved.

“This is not something that is going to go away,” Barger said. “It’s not gonna get swept under the rug."

Other elected officials argue the failure to provide answers affects far more than the areas that need to recover. Los Angeles City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, who represents parts of the San Fernando Valley, said understanding what happened last January is necessary so the city can avoid repeating the same mistakes and prevent future disasters.

“Separate from the reconstruction of the Palisades, it is our job to demand that level of insight to ensure we can protect more communities going forward,” said Rodriguez, who serves on the council’s ad-hoc recovery committee. “Sadly, I don’t feel confident that we are at a juncture right now that we can absolutely say that.”

Besides the ongoing city and county investigations, other major reports on the wildfires are expected this year. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office is planning to publish an assessment of public agencies’ preparations and response to the fires. Newsom’s office in November released a detailed timeline of events, but the study began Jan. 7 and did not include the Lachman fire. State parks employees have been criticized for not helping ensure that fire, which burned parklands, was extinguished. The state has said that was LAFD’s job. U.S. Sens. Rick Scott and Ron Johnson, Republicans who represent Florida and Wisconsin, respectively, are conducting a congressional investigation of the Palisades fire.

By the end of the year, the state auditor is scheduled to publish its own review of the blazes. Assemblymember John Harabedian, a Democrat who represents Altadena and requested the audit, said fire survivors are justified in their frustrations.

“The longer that we don’t have these answers, it feels like it’s an unintentional or intentional way to cover up the truth,” Harabedian said.