3 critical days, many ignored warnings: How the LAFD failed to prevent the Palisades inferno

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Jacob Ulibarri spent about six hours on New Year’s Day last year squashing hot spots where the Lachman fire had burned.The rookie Los Angeles firefighter arrived sometime after 7 a.m., when the smoky areas were all over and easy to see.

By the time the next crew swapped with his that afternoon, they were scarcer: “One every 30 minutes, roughly,” Ulibarri recalled.At that point, Battalion Chief Martin Mullen, who was running the mop-up operation, had walked three laps around the perimeter of the fire.

He recalled one hot spot he saw about 10 a.m., which crews hit with water.Later in the afternoon, Mullen did his fourth and last loop and left the area for good.He decided to leave the hoses out overnight, just in case.Over the next two days, a series of communication failures and questionable decisions led crews to leave the area prematurely, with embers from the small Jan.

1 fire later reigniting into the devastating Palisades fire.A firefighter picking up hoses on Jan.

2 found crackling, red-hot coals in the dirt and warned colleagues that a more thorough mop-up was needed.Also that morning, a captain cautioned his chief that it was too soon to pick up the hoses.

In yet another missed opportunity, crews apparently did not walk the entire perimeter of the burn scar after a caller reported smoke in the area on Jan.3.

The revelations, contained in the sworn testimony of a dozen firefighters this year as part of a lawsuit filed by Palisades fire victims, corroborate previous reporting by The Times and call into question the Los Angeles Fire Department’s repeated claims that commanders left the fire “dead out.” More than a year later, with much of Pacific Palisades still in ruins, LAFD leaders have refused to explain how or why the breakdowns occurred.The firefighters’ depositions offer the clearest timeline yet of how LAFD leaders dealt with the Lachman fire and r...