A batch of just-released text messages and other communications between California officials and the Los Angeles Fire Department from the run-up to the Pacific Palisades Fire reveals a system more concerned with a few endangered plants than with massive destruction and death.
Twelve people died in the massive fires during three weeks of January 2025, with 6,837 structures destroyed (and another thousand or so damaged), more than 23,000 acres burned, and total damages currently estimated at about $25 billion with a B in the Palisades, Topanga, and Malibu areas of Los Angeles County.
We learned why on Saturday in a Los Angeles Times report so shocking that it led to a city-wide epidemic of shattered teeth from jaws hitting the floor at velocities approaching the speed of light.
This report so completely gobsmacks me that I can’t even summarize it. So here are the first three paragraphs of Jenny Jarvie and Alene Tchekmedyian’s story, reproduced exactly as they appear (just) outside of the paper’s paywall:
An hour after midnight Jan. 1, as a small brush fire blazed across Topanga State Park, a California State Parks employee texted the Los Angeles Fire Department’s heavy equipment supervisor to find out if they were sending in bulldozers.
“Heck no that area is full of endangered plants,” Capt. Richard Diede replied at 9:52 a.m, five hours after LAFD declared the fire contained.
“I would be a real idiot to ever put a dozer in that area,” he wrote. “I’m so trained.”
What does one possibly say to that? In words, I mean. When I claimed this story in PJ’s Slack backchannel, Managing Editor and All ‘Round Good Guy Chris Queen said to me, “You couldn’t script this level of idiocy.”
“I honestly don’t know what I’m going to use for words,” I admitted to him. Reread my headline. That’s as close as I could get to words.
“LAFD was the agency responsible for putting out the fire,” the report continued, getting into a current lawsuit over damages. “But plaintiffs’ attorneys allege the state should have done more to monitor the burn scar and ensure the area was safe.”
Testimony and texts from state environmental scientists show that California State Parks’ initial concern when the fire broke out was whether the fire was on park land and whether firefighting efforts and equipment would harm federally endangered plants and artifacts.
However, it remains unclear whether the state significantly influenced the LAFD from containing and mopping up the fire. LAFD decided early on not to use bulldozers, but has not explained why. LAFD announced it had contained the fire at 4:46 a.m. Jan. 1, less than 20 minutes after the first state parks official arrived at the command post.
Six days later, that still-smoldering fire would turn into the massive conflagration that burned down the Palisades.
Having settled down a bit since my initial disbelief, I was finally able to come up with a question — one that might linger with you throughout the rest of the day.
And Another Thing: Here’s a link to the paywalled version of the report, on the off chance that you subscribe to the L.A. Times. Company policy says I can’t provide a link to a free, archived version, so I hope you know how to find one. Worth your effort, I promise.
What did Diede mean by “I am so trained?” Did he mean, “That is the manner in which I have been trained?” Or did he mean, “I am sooooo trained!” like a middle-schooler might boast?
If his official training includes not sending in the bulldozers where there’s a risk to endangered plants — and I suspect that’s the case — then we need to call into question California’s training priorities and protocols. And whether the people in charge of writing them were first given lobotomies. Frontal and backal.
If Diede keeps a journal with notes that sound like they might come from a seventh-grade cheerleader or basketball player, that’s another thing, and one I’d rather we not get into before my second cup of coffee.
Whatever the case, however, this is where I’d like to lean close to Capt. Diede’s ear and gently remind him…
ENDANGERED PLANTS BURN, TOO, YOU DAFT GIT!!!
…but as a highly-trained opinion columnist, I’m supposed to stick (mostly) to facts and reason, and (mostly) avoid personal invective.
Besides, Diede must know all that already. And California must be consulting with the feds and reconsidering its firefighting policies, right? Because people are more important than a few plants that maybe the bulldozers could have transplanted somewhere else, right?
Right?
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There’s more where this came from.
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