A New report in the Los Angeles Times He notes that firefighters were ordered to abandon the raging underground fire that later became the devastating Palisades Fire, something crews on the ground thought was a “bad idea.”
According to text messages reviewed by The Times, firefighters told their battalion commander that “the ground was still burning and the rocks remained hot to the touch” at the site of the Lackman Fire, which burned on New Year’s Day before it could be contained.
Despite that warning, “their battalion commander ordered them to raise water hoses and withdraw from the area on Jan. 2 — the day after the 8-acre blaze was declared contained — rather than stay put and make sure there were no hidden embers that could start a new blaze,” the Times reported.
That first fire, which prosecutors say was started by an Uber driver, remained burning underground until strong winds ignited it on January 7.
This fire developed into the Palisades Fire, which killed 12 people and devastated the Pacific Palisades area.
Mayor Karen Bass and current and former Los Angeles Fire Department officials declined or did not return The Times’s requests for comment, but officials said they believe the Lackman fire has been extinguished.
However, many rank-and-file firefighters disagreed with that assessment and expressed their dismay in texts reviewed by The Times.
“In one text message, a firefighter who was at the scene on January 2 wrote that the battalion commander was told it was a bad idea to leave the burn scar unprotected because of visible signs of burning terrain,” the Times reported. “The rest is history,” the firefighter wrote in recent weeks.