Los Angeles Officials Admit Cover-Up in Palisades Fire

One Year After the Palisades Fire

One year ago, the Palisades Fire tore through one of Los Angeles’s most affluent neighborhoods, killing 12 people and destroying nearly 7,000 homes.

Now, on the anniversary, the new fire chief has admitted what residents long suspected: officials rewrote the official report to make themselves look better.

The mayor was in Africa when the flames broke out. The fire chief got fired. A 117-million-gallon reservoir sat empty.

And the small brush fire that started it all? Firefighters say they warned their bosses the ground was still hot before they were ordered to leave.

Report Edited to Shield Leadership

New LAFD Chief Jaime Moore stood before the Fire Commission on January 6, 2026, and made a stunning admission.

The departments after-action report on the Palisades Fire had been edited multiple times to protect top brass from criticism. A section originally labeled failures was renamed primary challenges.

Language stating the department did not align with its own policies was changed to say crews went above and beyond.

The reports author, Battalion Chief Kenneth Cook, refused to sign the final version, calling it highly unprofessional.

A New Years Day Fire Started Everything

Just after midnight on January 1, 2025, a small brush fire broke out on a hillside above Pacific Palisades.

The 8-acre blaze, later named the Lachman Fire, brought firefighters to the scene within hours. By morning, they declared it fully contained with no further updates expected. But the fire never fully went out.

It kept smoldering underground in the dense root systems, invisible to anyone watching from above. Six days later, it would erupt into one of the worst urban wildfires in California history.

Firefighters Said the Ground Was Hot

On January 2, crews on the Lachman Fire scene raised concerns.

The ground was still smoldering. Rocks were hot to the touch. But a battalion chief ordered them to roll up their hoses and leave anyway.

LAFD records later contradicted official statements about how thoroughly the area was checked. The department claimed crews returned on January 3 to feel for heat and dig out hotspots.

But some firefighters said the warnings they raised were ignored, and the after-action report made almost no mention of what happened in those critical days.

The Reservoir Was Empty for a Year

The Santa Ynez Reservoir was built after the 1961 Bel Air Fire specifically to protect Pacific Palisades. It holds 117 million gallons.

But when the Palisades Fire broke out, it was bone dry.

A tear in the reservoirs cover had been discovered in early 2024, and the city drained it for repairs. Those repairs took nearly a year to even get started, thanks to bureaucratic bidding requirements.

A state report later found that even a full reservoir probably could not have stopped the devastation. But for residents watching hydrants run dry, the empty reservoir became a symbol of everything that went wrong.

100-mph Winds Turned Embers Into Disaster

On January 7, 2025, the Santa Ana winds arrived with a vengeance.

Gusts topped 100 mph in some areas, grounding firefighting helicopters and spreading embers for miles. The underground fire from New Years Day broke through the surface and exploded across the hillsides.

By nightfall, the Palisades Fire had burned thousands of acres. Residents fleeing on Sunset Boulevard sat in gridlock as flames closed in.

Police officers shouted through megaphones: Get out of your car if you want to live.

Mayor Bass Was in Ghana When It Started

As the fire erupted, Mayor Karen Bass was 6,000 miles away in Africa.

She had traveled to Ghana for a presidential inauguration at the invitation of the Biden administration.

Red flag warnings had been issued days earlier. Bass later said she was not properly warned about the severity of the conditions.

Photos showed her at a reception hosted by the U.S. ambassador while smoke rose over Los Angeles. She landed back in LA on January 8 and refused to answer questions from reporters at the airport. Weeks later, she called the trip a mistake.

Fire Chief Crowley Got Fired in February

Six weeks after the fire, Bass removed Fire Chief Kristin Crowley from her post.

The mayor blamed Crowley for staffing failures, saying 1,000 firefighters who could have been on duty were sent home on Crowleys watch.

Crowley pushed back, blaming city leadership for years of budget cuts that left the department stretched thin. The firefighters union called her a scapegoat.

Crowley appealed her firing to the City Council in March but lost 13-2. She later filed a legal claim against the city alleging defamation and retaliation.

Feds Arrested the Suspected Arsonist in October

In October 2025, federal agents arrested 29-year-old Jonathan Rinderknecht at his sisters home in Florida.

Prosecutors say he started the New Years Day fire deliberately, hiking up to a clearing near Skull Rock Trail just after midnight and igniting vegetation with a lighter.

Cell phone data placed him as the only person in the area. He had previously lived in Pacific Palisades and was familiar with the trails.

Investigators also found an image he generated using AI months earlier showing a burning forest with people fleeing.

He faces up to 45 years in prison if convicted. His trial is set for April 2026.

The Report Author Disowned His Own Work

Battalion Chief Kenneth Cook spent months preparing the LAFD after-action report.

But when it was released in October 2025, he emailed the interim fire chief within an hour. The version made public was not the one he wrote.

Whole sections had been deleted. Conclusions had been altered. Cook wrote that he could not endorse it in its current form.

He called the edits highly unprofessional and inconsistent with established standards. The department refused to answer questions about who made the changes or why.

Newsom Still Has Not Released State Report

Governor Gavin Newsom ordered an independent state investigation into the fire response shortly after the disaster.

Almost a year later, that report still has not been released.

Residents and critics say the delay looks like a cover-up. Newsoms office has blamed the complexity of the investigation.

Meanwhile, the governor has been asking the federal government for $34 billion in disaster aid, which the Trump administration has not delivered.

Newsom plans to visit Los Angeles this week to meet with survivors, but many residents say they want answers, not photo ops.

Fewer Than a Dozen Homes Are Rebuilt

One year after the fire, the Palisades looks like a patchwork of empty lots and construction sites.

More than 2,600 rebuilding permits have been issued across the Palisades and Altadena burn zones, but fewer than a dozen homes are actually finished. About 70% of displaced residents still cannot return.

Many are paying mortgages, rent, and property taxes all at the same time while fighting insurance companies for payouts.

Mayor Bass proposed waiving permit fees for fire victims, but the City Council has delayed action, worried about the cost to the citys already strained budget.

Residents Rally Under They Let Us Burn

On the one-year anniversary, more than a thousand residents gathered in Pacific Palisades for a protest they called They Let Us Burn.

Organizers blamed Governor Newsom, Mayor Bass, the LAFD, the water department, and state parks officials for a total breakdown in prevention and leadership.

Protest signs lined the streets. Families who lost everything demanded transparency about what went wrong and a clear plan for rebuilding.

The anger is not going away.

Many residents say they will keep showing up until someone is held accountable for what they believe was a preventable disaster.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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