Palisades fire report was sent to mayor's office for 'refinements,' Fire Commission president says

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Months after the devastating Palisades fire, the head of the Los Angeles Fire Commission inquired about the Fire Department’s long-awaited after-action report.Interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva said that a “working draft” had been sent to Mayor Karen Bass’ office, Genethia Hudley Hayes told The Times on Tuesday.

In the conversation, which took place in mid-August or later, Villanueva said that the mayor’s office had asked for “refinements,” but he did not say what they were, according to Hudley Hayes.Hudley Hayes, who was appointed by Bass in June 2023 to serve on the five-member commission that provides civilian oversight of the LAFD, said that in her long career in civic roles, she had learned that words like “refinements” could mean troubling changes to a government report, made for the purpose of hiding facts.

Earlier Tuesday, Fire Chief Jaime Moore, responding to the findings of a Times investigation, acknowledged that the after-action report had been edited to soften criticism of the LAFD leadership’s handling of the Palisades fire.The Times had previously reported that Hudley Hayes was concerned enough about possible edits that she sought advice from a deputy city attorney.But Hudley Hayes’ remarks Tuesday were her first public statements that her concerns stemmed from what she understood to be the mayor’s office’s possible intent to influence the report, which was supposed to lay out what went wrong in fighting the Palisades fire and how to prevent the mistakes from happening again.

California The admission comes more than two weeks after The Times found that the city’s report had been changed numerous times to soften language and burnish the image of the Fire Department in the aftermath of the devastating fire.Hudley Hayes said that after reviewing an early draft of the after-action report, as well as the final document released by the LA...