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MONDAY, JANUARY 20- JANUARY 26, 2025
NO. 207
VOL. 13,
Red flag conditions expire in Southland fire areas, but winds may return
LAFD chief defends predeployment decisions prior to Palisades Fire
By City News Service
By City News Service
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ith the latest Santa Ana winds behind them, firefighters are working Friday to extend containment of the Eaton and Palisades fires and douse hot spots, but while conditions have improved dramatically, authorities said it could still be more than a week until most evacuated residents are permitted to return home. Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said he understands the desire for people to return, especially if their homes are undamaged and habitable, but he expects it to be “at least another week, and that’s an estimate, but I believe it’s going to be longer than that.” While much of the active fire has been doused, Luna and county Fire Chief Anthony Marrone noted that there is extensive work still going on in the fire zones, including securing utilities to ensure safety, removing hazardous wastes from the area and -- most delicately -- searching for human remains. “Our search and rescue efforts continue,” Luna said. “... There are areas we are holding because we believe there may be deceased victims there.” He said the process is “going to take a little while. Please be patient with us.” He added that while he is empathetic to people anxious to return home, he is more empathetic to people waiting to learn about missing loved ones who may have died in the fires. Luna also noted that in many of the severe burn areas, “It literally looks like a bomb dropped. There are things everywhere.” Marrone also estimated that it could be a week or more for many residents to return, saying authorities have to ensure the areas are
Kristin Crowley, Los Angeles Fire Department chief. | Photo courtesy of the LA County Fire Department
A firefighter douses a building destroyed in the Eaton Fire. | Photo courtesy of Cal Fire_Official/Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)
safe to reoccupy. “The last thing we want as public safety and the county and city leadership, we don’t want people going back to an area and getting injured,” he said. “We know there’s a lot of conversation about when we can come back, they want a date. We don’t have a date.” Some evacuation orders have been lifted in recent days in the Eaton and Palisades Fire burn areas, but the bulk of the orders will likely stay in place well into next week. Authorities had initially been running some escorts, with officers accompanying residents into the burn areas for brief periods to retrieve items or view their homes, but Marrone said that process became too unwieldy, occupying too many law enforcement personnel. A three-day Santa Ana wind event wrapped up Wednesday night, failing to
ever produce the hazardous gusts that authorities feared might re-ignite the fires. Red flag warnings of critical fire danger expired in most of the region at 6 p.m. Wednesday, although a red flag warning was in effect until 3 p.m. Thursday in the western San Gabriel Mountains and the Golden State (5) and Antelope Valley (14) freeway corridors, with winds of 15 to 25 mph anticipated, along with gusts of up 40 mph. According to the National Weather Service, the region was expected to see a “significant cooling trend through the weekend.” And more importantly for firefighters, humidity levels will rise, alleviating the dry conditions that helped fuel the spread of wildfires over the past week. “By Thursday afternoon a solid onshore flow will be arriving along the coast See Fire areas Page 02
and working its way inland through the rest of the day, finally bringing this long offshore stretch to an end,” according to the NWS. “For Friday and the weekend, much cooler temperatures are expected as the cool onshore flow off the ocean will prevail.” Forecasters warned, however, that Santa Ana winds are likely to return early next week, “especially later Monday into Tuesday,” but it was too early to judge how strong that event might be. As of Thursday, the nearly 24,000-acre Palisades Fire was 27% contained, and containment of the 14,117acre Eaton Fire was at 55%. Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley said Thursday that with the latest wind event ending, crews were focused on locating “hot spots and
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os Angeles Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley on Wednesday defended pre-deployment decisions made by the agency prior to last week’s devastating windstorm that fanned the deadly Palisades Fire, saying resources were pre-positioned at a level beyond what would normally be deployed in a Santa Ana wind event, while also maintaining adequate staffing across the city. “We deployed resources in very, very calculated ways throughout the city,” Crowley said Wednesday morning. “We’re very system and process-oriented, for the right reasons. We follow a system. We did that. We pre-deployed the necessary resources (after the wind forecasts) ... not knowing where a fire might break out in the city.” Her comments followed a report in the Los Angeles Times contending that department officials chose not to assign about 1,000 available firefighters and dozens of water-carrying See LAFD chief Page 24
engines for emergency deployment before the Palisades Fire erupted Jan. 7. Citing interviews and internal LAFD records, the Times reported that officials chose not to order firefighters to remain on duty for a second shift as the winds were building that day, staffing only five of more than 40 engines available for deployment to battle wildfires. Those extra engines and firefighters were called into duty after the fire started raging, according to The Times. The paper reported that no additional engines had been placed in the Palisades area, but nine engines were pre-positioned in the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood, while additional engines were moved the morning of Jan. 7 to the northeast Los Angeles area. Crowley insisted Wednesday that the department “pre-deployed the resources on top of what we would normally do.” Once the fire erupted, she said, crews “went to