| The sad and apparently troubled young man now being accused of setting the hideous and deadly Palisades fire will be the target of venom, to be sure. But what's maddening to many of the people who owned the more than 6,800 homes and other buildings incinerated in January, and to the families of the 12 victims killed, is that fire crews seemed to have the fire licked. Six days earlier. Until they didn't. |
| That's because the Palisades fire now clearly seems to have been a holdover fire. That's what fire professionals call a fire that reignites hours or even days after it's first contained. |
| Federal authorities indicted Jonathan Rinderknecht for arson Wednesday, charging that the 29-year-old sometimes-Uber driver not only set off that modest fire in the first minutes of 2025 but that, "unbeknownst to anyone, the fire continued to smolder and burn underground within the root structure of dense vegetation." |
| "On January 7, heavy winds caused the underground fire to surface and spread above ground in what became known as the Palisades Fire," the complaint against Rinderknecht says. |
'Reignition' has led to several deadly fires |
| If we didn't recognize it before, those of us who live in fire country now need to understand how "reignition" presents a clear and present danger. |
| Some of the worst fires of modern times have actually not been "new" but rather the rekindling of flames that firefighters were sure they had defeated. |
- It happened in the Oakland Hills in 1991 when a modest backyard fire rekindled. Result: 25 people dead. 150 injured. 3,469 homes and apartments lost.
- It happened in Lahaina, Maui, in 2023 when a fire near a power pole took off a second time, just hours later. Result: 102 dead and much of the historic resort town immolated.
- And sources have told me and Times cop reporter Richard Winton that a rekindling is suspected to be the cause of the November, 2024 Mountain fire in Ventura County. Result: 240 structures burned and multiple people injured.
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Expert says the Lachman Fire cleanup fell short |
| No one likes to look askance at firefighters. They run toward danger, risking their lives, when almost everyone else runs away. But a highly experienced wildland fire investigator who has studied the ignition of January's Palisades fire told me it is clear that the mop-up after the New Year's Day fire fell short of acceptable standards. |
| The investigator, hired by lawyers to review the scene, said he saw the markings — as he expected — where fire crews created a "hand line" around the perimeter of the Jan. 1 fire. That means tearing out brush and other combustibles, turning over the soil to put out any hidden embers and then keeping a close watch to make sure there is not a restart. |
| The investigator didn't want me to name him, because he had not been cleared by his clients to discuss his findings. He said that what he saw high above the Palisades persuaded him the handline had been deficient. "The fire break area should be at least one-and-a-half times as wide as the surrounding vegetation is tall," he said. His review found that the surrounding chaparral stood as much as a dozen feet high. |
| "So the break should have been like 18 feet. And there were places where it was steep and I could just see a scratching they had done, maybe 18 inches or so," he added. "That's not enough. That's just not enough." |
The indictment won't resolve the blame game |
| A more basic and existential question will now confront homeowners, fire officials, insurers and the attorneys sure to follow. Who bears ultimate responsibility for the fire? The alleged arsonist? The fire crews and their superiors who apparently didn't do enough to make sure the embers of Jan. 1 had been entirely defeated? How about the fossil fuel producers and emitters (a.k.a. all of us) who have helped warm the planet and create the preconditions for disaster? |
| "This [criminal] affidavit puts the responsibility on the fire department. There needs to be a commission examining why this rekindled fire was allowed to reignite," Ed Nordskog, former leader of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department's arson unit, told Winton. "The arsonist set the first fire, but the fire department proactively has a duty to do certain things." |
| Kenny Cooper, the special agent in charge of the investigation for the U.S. Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, had a markedly different take. He said L.A. city crews did their best but had to contend with "a very difficult fire" that "burned deep within the ground, in roots and in structure, and remained active for several days." |
| "Fire departments cannot proactively prevent holdover fires," Cooper insisted. "The person who started this fire is solely to blame. I will never blame our brave firefighters when we know how this fire started." |
| Ronnie Villanueva, the city of L.A.'s interim fire chief, said he'd never heard of a holdover fire in his 40-plus years on the job. He said the department had "cold-trailed" the fire perimeter (similar to what the veteran fire investigator described) while also thoroughly dousing the land with water, even below grade. |
| "We went from the burned to the unburned [area] with the hose line and circled that whole area on January 1. We were there for more than 36 hours," Villanueva told The Times. "And as far as we were concerned, the fire was extinguished. Unbeknownst to us, it was still in the rooting system." |
| Villanueva said he was not sure the exact amount of space that crews cleared beyond the perimeter of the Jan. 1 fire. The interim chief said he had still been in retirement when the New Year's Day fire — and its catastrophic twin — ignited in January and so was not clear on all the details. |
| Times Staff writer Alene Tchekmedyian contributed to this story. |
Today's top stories |
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| A federal agent stands guard outside the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown L.A. in June. (Eric Thayer / Associated Press) |
L.A. County considers declaring state of emergency to fight back against ICE raids |
- A state of emergency is a precursor to enacting an eviction moratorium for households that have lost income due to the raids.
- In addition to the possibility of lawsuits or backlash from the Trump administration, county staff highlighted that the eviction moratorium could have an unintended consequence of residents' immigration status being revealed to their landlord if they use it to fight an eviction order in court.
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In the fire zones, an immigrant workforce warily carries out cleanups |
- When the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers completed its debris removal in Altadena after January's fire tore through the town, the task to clean what survived didn't stop.
- Hundreds of smoke-damaged and ash-filled homes remained standing on streets where others burned.
- Efforts to clean them have largely been carried out by immigrant workers who have not just risked their health while clearing homes of toxic material and debris but, with ongoing raids, the lives they have built in California.
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Tensions build inside David Ellison's Paramount over Israel stance |
- On Tuesday, "Red Alert" debuted on Paramount+, marking the second anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
- The high-profile project comes two months after Ellison assumed control of Paramount in an $8-billion buyout by his family.
- Since the deal closed Aug. 7, Ellison has positioned the company slightly right of the political center, and has been unafraid to challenge those in Hollywood who've called for a boycott of Israel.
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More big stories |
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Commentary and opinions |
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This morning's must reads |
| | | Artificial intelligence is now part of advertisers' arsenal, and some are using it to blur the line between newscast and sales pitch. | | | |
Other great reads |
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For your downtime |
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| A Craftsman-style home in Bungalow Heaven. Common features of a Craftsman home include low-pitched roofs with deep overhanging eaves and large front porches supported by sturdy columns. (Juliana Yamada/Los Angeles Times) |
Going out |
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Staying in |
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A question for you: What frustrates you the most about parking in L.A.? |
| Email us at essentialcalifornia@latimes.com, and your response might appear in the newsletter this week. |
And finally ... from our archives |
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| The front page of the Oct. 10, 1936 edition of the Los Angeles Times. (Los Angeles Times) |
| On Oct. 9, 1936, electrical power generated at the Hoover Dam arrived in Los Angeles. The city celebrated with floodlights and a parade on Broadway. |
| Times writer Thomas Treanor wrote about the event, which was featured on the front page of the Oct. 10, 1936 edition of the Los Angeles Times. |
| Have a great day, from the Essential California team |
| Jim Rainey, staff reporter
Hugo Martín, assistant editor, fast break desk
Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor
Andrew Campa, weekend writer
Karim Doumar, head of newsletters |
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