So, like, flames will pop up again over Pacific Palisades this week ’cause federal investigators are gonna light a fire to figure out what caused that big fire in January that killed a bunch of people and wrecked tons of homes. It’s been almost four months since the Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives Bureau started looking into the Palisades fire, and now they’re gonna set stuff on fire along the Temescal Ridge Trail between Skull Rock and Green Peak on Tuesday night. They think the Palisades fire started around 10:30 a.m. on Jan. 7 when super strong winds made the flames spread like crazy over the super dry land. The ATF peeps say this fire test will go on until Thursday. The investigators are hoping it’ll help them figure out exactly where the Palisades fire started and how it managed to go from the hills all the way to the ocean during a massive windstorm.
Rumor has it that the investigators are looking into whether a little eight-acre fire caused by fireworks a week earlier that the firefighters thought they put out in the same spot might have started up again. The Los Angeles fire folks say they’re gonna be there before, during, and after the testing to make sure everyone stays safe and the environment doesn’t get messed up. They haven’t ruled out the possibility that the fire somehow started on the morning of Jan. 7, either by starting up again from the old fire or by a new fire altogether. In any case, the sources are saying that the fire was probably caused by humans since there aren’t any power poles near the starting point, and the trail is used by lots of people. Some homeowners are even suing, saying that power lines were the reason for all the destruction.
The Los Angeles Fire Department has been super secretive about how they got ready for and responded to the fire, one of three huge fires that day. The Palisades fire caused billions of dollars in damage and might just be the most expensive disaster in L.A. history. People are so mad that there’s even a recall campaign going on against Bass, who’s gonna be up for reelection next year. She got a ton of flak for flying off to Ghana three days before the fire even though there were warnings about dangerous winds getting worse after she left.
Back on Jan. 1, there was a fire called the Lachman fire that started around 12:17 a.m. in the hills above Pacific Palisades. A local who lived two blocks from the Skull Rock trail reported it. Word on the street is that the Lachman fire was sparked by fireworks. Helicopters couldn’t fly at first ’cause of the wind, but around 1:40 a.m., they got up there to help the peeps on the ground. The news showed the huge flames towering over homes with firefighters trying to put them out.
By a little after 3:30 a.m., the fire folks said they stopped the fire from spreading. About an hour later, they reported that the whole perimeter of the fire was surrounded by a hose line and the fire was fully contained. But they kept some firefighters there to check for any hot spots left and to make sure the fire didn’t start up again.
Assistant Fire Chief Joe Everett, who helps run the LAFD’s West Bureau, including Pacific Palisades, said they did a thorough search of the trail and hillside after the January fires. They broke it all down into sections, looked into 250 leads, watched 90 hours of video, and did 50 interviews. On Feb. 21, Bass fired the fire chief, Kristin Crowley, saying she didn’t make good decisions before the fire. Apparently, Crowley and her peeps didn’t call for 1,000 firefighters to stay for another shift that morning, which would have doubled the number of peeps there. They said there weren’t enough engines for that many firefighters.
