After admitting last week that the Los Angeles Fire Department’s report after the Palisades fire was watered down to misrepresent the top-command staff, Fire Chief Jaime Moore said Monday that he does not plan to clarify who did this.
Moore said he’s taking a forward-looking approach and doesn’t want to blame the changes on the Oct. 8 report that downplayed the city’s failure to prepare and respond to the disaster. But he said his predecessor, interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva, was ultimately responsible for releasing the contents of the report.
As chief, Moore said, he would not allow the same type of after-action reports, which he said are intended to help the department learn from and correct past mistakes.
“I don’t think there’s any real help” in looking at who did the editing, Moore said in an interview with The Times. “I see where the initial report and the public report are intended to correct the same thing. They are intended to correct where we could be better. And it identifies … the steps that will be necessary to make those corrective measures.”
Moore, an LAFD veteran who took over the agency about two months ago, said last week that the redaction of the after-action report, first reported by The Times, was intended to “soften the language and reduce public criticism of the department’s leadership.”
On Monday, he said Villanueva “made the decision to publish it, he had something to do with the decision to publish it publicly, which caused these documents to happen.”
Villanueva did not respond to a request for comment.
“My efforts need to be focused on fixing things, not looking back and trying to blame anybody,” said Moore, who once led the LAFD’s Operations Valley Bureau, which oversees nearly 1,000 firefighters. “I have to fix where we are going so that it doesn’t happen again.”
The Times learned that the after-action report was designed to cover up mistakes by city leaders and the LAFD in handling a fire last January that killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes. The Times reviewed seven documents from the report obtained through a public records law request.
The most significant changes involved a decision by LAFD senior officials not to be fully staffed and to pre-deploy all available engines and firefighters to the Palisades or other high-risk areas ahead of the forecast for bad weather.
The first draft said the decision was “inconsistent” with policy, while the final version said the number of pre-deployed companies “exceeded the standard LAFD pre-deployment matrix.”
The report’s author, Army Chief Kenneth Cook, refused to approve the final version because of changes that altered his findings and made the report “grossly ineffective and inconsistent with our established standards.”
Moore said he spoke with Cook, whose version included more recommendations for improvement than those that made it into the final report.
“He doesn’t know who did the editing. He gave me the original submission, so that’s all I can go by,” Moore said, adding that other recommendations were included.
Earlier, the president of the Fire Commission said he was told that a draft of the after-action report was sent to the mayor’s office for “correction,” although he did not know what it was.
Moore said he would not refuse if the mayor, who is his boss, asked for the latest report to be prepared.
“I was just saying, ‘No way.
A spokesman previously said that the office of Mayor Karen Bass does not want to be changed and asked the LAFD to verify the truth of things such as the weather and how the department’s budget contributed to the tragedy.
“The report was written and edited by the Fire Department,” department spokeswoman Clara Karger said in an email last month. “We didn’t redline, review every page or review every draft of the report.”
Moore also described his efforts to address the mistakes made during the Lachman fire, which reignited days later in the fire that destroyed the Palisades. The after-action report contains only a brief mention of the previous fire.
The Times learned that the army chief had ordered firefighters to close their hoses and leave the burnt area even as workers complained that the ground was still smoldering. The Times reviewed text messages between firefighters and a third party, sent in the weeks and months after the fire, detailing workers’ concerns, and reported that at least one battalion chief assigned to the LAFD’s risk management division knew about them for months.
After the Times report, Bass ordered Moore to conduct an independent investigation into the LAFD’s handling of the Lachman fire.
Moore said he has opened an internal investigation into Lachman’s firing through the LAFD’s Professional Standards Division, which investigates complaints against members of the department. He said he asked the Fire Safety Research Institute, which reviewed the wildfires last January at the request of Gov. Gavin Newsom, to include the Lachman fire as part of the analysis, and the agency agreed. Moore also pointed to the LA City Council’s decision to hire an outside firm to investigate the Lachman and Palisades fires.
Even as the internal investigation continues, Moore said he spoke with the chief of staff who was on duty at the time of the Lachman fire.
“He swears no one has ever told him by word of mouth or by text that there are hot spots,” said Moore.
Moore later added: “If that’s true, then—ask me about discipline—potential discipline.”
Former Times columnist Paul Pringle contributed to this report.
