Days before the Palisades Fire, was a state worker hindering the LAFD?

Survivors of the Palisades Fire don’t just want sympathy.

They want someone held responsible.

Nearly a year after the blaze that killed 12 people and destroyed more than 6,800 structures, reporters Rich McHugh of NewsNation and Annie Rose Ramos of KTLA say serious new questions are being raised about what happened in the days before the fire exploded.

And some of those questions point straight at the State of California.

Grieving Community Demands Answers

Rich McHugh reports that survivors spoke at a recent field hearing organized by Senators Rick Scott and Ron Johnson, demanding accountability for what they describe as gross negligence and mismanagement by state and local officials.

Reality TV personality Spencer Pratt, who lost his home, has become one of the most vocal critics.

McHugh says Pratt emotionally described how his family escaped while 12 of their neighbors – many elderly or disabled – died in their homes.

Pratt told lawmakers that those victims “deserve to feel safe in their homes,” but instead lost everything because of failures by California, Los Angeles County, and the Los Angeles Fire Department, according to McHugh’s reporting.

You can feel the frustration in that room just from the way McHugh frames it.

These aren’t people looking for a sound bite – they’re looking for why the system failed them so badly.

Where The Palisades Fire Really Began

McHugh reports that, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Palisades Fire didn’t come out of nowhere.

It started on state land and can be traced back to the earlier Lachman Fire on January 1.

Federal officials concluded that an arsonist set that New Year’s Day blaze, which was initially believed to be extinguished.

But underground embers remained, McHugh notes, and six days later those embers reignited into the far more destructive Palisades Fire.

That’s where the blame game starts.

Governor Gavin Newsom, McHugh reports, has publicly emphasized climate change, pointing to simultaneous droughts, extreme weather, and “one of the most devastating wildfires in American history in the middle of winter in Los Angeles.”

Climate clearly mattered.

But McHugh’s reporting makes it equally clear that what people did – or didn’t do – on that hillside in the days after January 1 may have mattered just as much.

State Says “Not Our Job” – Attorney Says Otherwise

In response to a lawsuit from more than 3,000 Palisades residents, McHugh says Newsom’s spokesperson took a hard line:

“The state didn’t start this fire – that was an arsonist – and the state wasn’t responsible for responding to or monitoring this fire.”

But attorney Roger Behle, who represents Palisades families in that lawsuit, flatly disagrees, according to McHugh.

He argues the state’s own rules prove California did have responsibility.

McHugh reports that state park guidelines say burned areas in a state park must remain closed until staff inspect the area and fix any safety and resource protection issues.

Behle tells NewsNation that when a wildfire burns on state park land, the state must close the land until a state park representative confirms there are no further hazards to the public.

But the park at Topanga State Park was not closed, McHugh notes.

Behle says people were still hiking through the burned area while “embers in the hillside remained active.”

Hikers even took video on January 1 and January 2 showing the fire still smoldering.

If that’s accurate, it’s not just a paperwork problem.

It’s a direct conflict between what the rules require and what actually happened on the ground.

Allegations Of Interference With LAFD Mop-Up

McHugh goes further, reporting what Behle calls the most damning allegation.

According to Behle, people who were on scene say a state park representative went up to the Lachman burn scar on January 2 carrying a map.

McHugh reports that this employee allegedly told Los Angeles Fire Department crews what they could and could not do.

Behle says witnesses describe the representative directing firefighters where they could bulldoze and where they couldn’t, and what they were allowed to touch in the burn area.

If that account is true, the implications are serious.

You’d have a state employee – who is not a fire commander – effectively shaping the scope of mop-up operations in a very sensitive area days before it reignited.

McHugh also notes that 911 call logs show that on January 3, someone reported seeing “wisps of smoke” in the same area.

Behle argues that people kept saying, “We’re still seeing smoke up there,” yet the state didn’t stay on that hillside until they could be certain there was no risk of rekindling.

NewsNation, McHugh adds, asked California State Parks to respond.

They declined, citing pending litigation, but did say they hadn’t closed the park because LAFD had declared the fire contained.

That answer basically shifts responsibility back toward city fire officials – while Behle’s allegations push it right back at the state.

Firefighters Ordered To Leave A Smoldering Hillside

KTLA’s Annie Rose Ramos adds another layer, drawing on Los Angeles Times reporting and firefighter texts.

Ramos reports that video from a hiker on January 2 – just one day after the Lachman Fire – shows smoke still rising from the ground above the Skull Rock trailhead in Pacific Palisades.

She notes that arson suspect Jonathan Rinderknecht has been charged with starting that original January 1 fire.

But the key problem, according to Ramos’ report, is what happened after that first blaze.

The Lachman Fire, Ramos says, restarted on January 7 and became the Palisades Fire, destroying thousands of homes and killing 12 people.

The Los Angeles Fire Department has publicly said this wasn’t a simple rekindle from failed suppression.

Ramos reports that LAFD and ATF officials described it as an “undetectable holdover fire” – a blaze buried deep in dense vegetation and roots that quietly burned until catastrophic winds hit.

ATF special agent in charge Kenny Cooper is shown saying the fire was deeply seated and undetected until those winds turned it into a house-destroying firestorm, according to Ramos.

But Ramos notes that video of visible smoldering and new reporting from the Los Angeles Times suggest the fire might not have been so “undetectable” after all.

She reports that the Times obtained firefighter text messages indicating that crews were ordered to roll up their hoses and leave the burn site on January 2.

Those texts show firefighters on the ground believed abandoning the smoldering scene was a “bad idea.”

That’s a powerful detail.

It suggests that the people closest to the fire had doubts – and those doubts weren’t enough to change the decision made higher up the chain.

Tough Questions For Fire Officials And The State

Ramos also highlights that local officials are now asking pointed questions.

Los Angeles City Councilmember Traci Park publicly asked why, given that there had already been a fire and rekindling in the days before January 7, additional resources weren’t pre-staged in the Palisades area as high winds approached.

Arson and bomb investigator Ed Norskog, interviewed in Ramos’ report, says both city and county fire departments have the tools to check burn scenes thoroughly after a fire.

He points out they had five or six days before the high winds hit to do that work.

Norskog says those are exactly the kinds of questions some independent panel should be asking — and he calls them “tough questions,” as Ramos reports.

Meanwhile, Rich McHugh notes that Governor Newsom’s office did not answer detailed questions from NewsNation.

They simply repeated that the state wasn’t responsible for responding to or monitoring the initial fire.

State Parks, McHugh adds, maintain that the park wasn’t closed because LAFD declared the fire contained – effectively implying that if someone dropped the ball, it wasn’t them.

You can see the outline of a classic disaster postmortem:

State pointing at city.

City pointing at circumstances and weather.

Lawyers and residents pointing at both.

Could This Disaster Have Been Prevented?

Neither McHugh nor Ramos comes out and declares a simple villain.

Instead, their reporting raises a disturbing possibility: this might have been preventable – or at least far less catastrophic – if everyone had treated those lingering embers like the threat they were.

From McHugh’s side, you have an attorney saying state rules required the park to stay closed and monitored until staff confirmed the area was safe – but it stayed open, with hikers walking past smoldering ground.

You also have allegations that a state park employee may have restricted LAFD’s mop-up tactics.

From Ramos’ side, you have firefighters reportedly ordered to pull out from a hillside they thought shouldn’t be abandoned, plus videos that seem to undercut the idea this was completely “undetectable.”

Layer on top of that high winds, dry conditions, and a community in a canyon known for fire risk, and you get a tragedy that now looks less like bad luck and more like a chain of avoidable decisions.

In my view, what’s most troubling is how many different warning signs were flashing – smoldering ground, 911 calls, firefighter concern, written guidelines – yet no one seems to have had both the authority and the will to say, “We’re not leaving this hillside until we are absolutely sure it’s dead out.”

That’s the core of the question now being asked by survivors, lawyers, and reporters like Rich McHugh and Annie Rose Ramos:

Not just who is technically responsible under the law, but whether a mix of bureaucracy, miscommunication, and second-guessing kept the people with hoses and tools from fully finishing the job.

Until those questions are answered honestly, it’s hard to blame Palisades residents for feeling like the system left them exposed – long before the flames ever reached their homes.

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The article Days before the Palisades Fire, was a state worker hindering the LAFD? first appeared on Survival World.