The findings portray a staggering breakdown in communication, competence, and leadership at nearly every level of the response.
A scathing new investigation into the Palisades Fire does not assign responsibility to a single person or agency. However, it found that Los Angeles sent firefighters home even as dangerous winds threatened the region, while some residents received evacuation warnings 40 to 90 minutes after their homes had already begun burning.
The 724-page fire incident analysis was released Friday, nearly 21 months after the January 2025 blaze ripped through Pacific Palisades, a coastal Los Angeles community, killing 12 people.
According to the report, the catastrophe “was the result of multiple interconnected factors rather than any single decision, event, or system failure.” Even so, the Los Angeles Fire Department receives the most pointed criticism.
The review was conducted by the Fire Safety Research Institute, part of the UL Research Institute.
RedState alum Kira Davis captured the frustration many residents felt as they struggled to get reliable information:
After waking up to reports that the fires were moving closer to Brentwood, Davis said she was waiting for a Los Angeles County news conference to end so officials would provide a meaningful update. She complained that residents were hearing almost nothing useful about the unfolding emergency. https://t.co/k4155jJwfp
— Kira (@Kiradavis) January 11, 2025
The investigation found that critical information moved far too slowly through the emergency response system:
The lag in notifying residents stands out as one of the report’s most troubling conclusions.
Investigators determined that people living closest to the fire’s origin sometimes waited approximately 40 to 90 minutes for evacuation alerts—well after flames had reached nearby homes.
At 10:46 a.m., just 16 minutes after the fire was reported, a firefighting helicopter warned over the radio that the flames could reach homes “within minutes.” Yet it was not until 11:29 a.m. that an LAFD assistant chief called for an evacuation extending “all the way down to PCH,” or Pacific Coast Highway. By then, the report says, spot fires were burning on both sides of a major escape route.
Los Angeles issued its first official evacuation order at 12:09 p.m.
At the same time, Mayor Karen Bass was in Ghana attending a presidential inauguration when the fires erupted, despite extensive warnings about the dangerous combination of extreme winds and a heat wave:
🔥 When asked about the Palisades Fire, @KarenBassLA made two remarks that drew attention:
1. She compared being in Ghana 🇬🇭 with being away from home while a relative is ill. Critics argued the analogy was inadequate because the disaster killed 12 people and devastated two cities.
2. Blamed Palisades Fire on “climate change,”… pic.twitter.com/uAAaWjCBGL
— Houman David Hemmati, MD, PhD (@houmanhemmati) September 30, 2026
🔥 When questioned about the Palisades Fire, @KarenBassLA said 2 interesting things:
1. She likened her time in Ghana 🇬🇭 to being out of town while a family member is sick, a comparison critics rejected given that 12 people died and two cities suffered catastrophic destruction.
2. She attributed the Palisades Fire to “climate change” without, critics said, acknowledging the alleged arsonist.
Also made excuses about brush clearance, blaming the state. Conveniently did NOT mention the fact that her firefighting water reservoir was (and REMAINS) EMPTY!!!!!!
Not only that, but she deflected accountability and threw her fire chief under the bus:
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who ousted then-Fire Chief Kristin Crowley weeks after the fire, said the report “confirms much of what we already knew.”
“That is why I put in place new leadership at the Los Angeles Fire Department,” Bass said in a statement to The Post.
The report reveals a massive system that hadn’t planned for a conflagration of this size and was ill-prepared for it, even though wildfires and weather anomalies have been features of California for thousands of years. The frustrating part? Since it was such a systemwide failure, it’s extremely difficult to assign blame:
No single failure explains the devastation of the Palisades and Eaton fires that burned through Los Angeles County in January 2025, a new report concludes. Instead, the blazes exposed weaknesses across a system never designed to combat a wind-driven conflagration that spread from structure to structure at sweeping scale…
As a result, the report, which completes an analysis of some of the most deadly, destructive and costly fires in state history, raises a harder question: If responsibility is spread across an entire system, who is responsible for fixing it?
That being said, RedState has reported extensively on some of the unacceptable mistakes made by state and local leadership: a key reservoir above the Palisades was left empty, fire hydrants didn’t work, the LAFD was as focused on DEI and LGBTQ issues as they were on fighting fires, the State Parks Department was accused of prioritizing an endangered plant over putting out the Lachman fire — the blaze that later rekindled into the Palisades Fire — the LAFD pre-deployed only limited extra crews to avoid overtime payments, and many observers have long contended that the state’s environmentalist-pushed brush control policies are unsafe.
In short, one can only conclude that this is not a well-run, efficient city, county or state. Nobody is coming out looking good. The best we can hope for is that officials have learned their lesson and are preparing a whole lot harder for the next incident, which isn’t a question of if — it’s a question of when.
It’s today’s California, though, so don’t hold your breath. Remember, this and so much more is the “progressive experiment” that Newsom, Harris, Pelosi et al. want to roll out nationwide. If we let it happen, we’re doomed.
Editor’s Note: California is the poster child for everything that is wrong with the Democrat Party and the “progressive” movement.
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