Author

The author of the Los Angeles Fire Department’s after-action report on the Palisades fire declined to endorse it because of substantial deletions that altered his findings, calling the edited version “highly unprofessional and inconsistent with our established standards.”

Battalion Chief Kenneth Cook emailed then-interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva and other LAFD officials with the subject line “Palisades AARR Non-Endorsement,” about an hour after the highly anticipated report was made public Oct. 8.

“Having reviewed the revised version submitted by your office, I must respectfully decline to endorse it in its current form,” Cook wrote in the email obtained by The Times. “The document has undergone substantial modifications and contains significant deletions of information that, in some instances, alter the conclusions originally presented.”

Battalion Chief Kenneth Cook complained to former interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva about deletions and revisions in the Palisades fire after-action report.

(L.A. City Mayor’s Office)

He continued, “While I fully understand the need to address potential liability concerns and to modify certain sections in consultation with the City Attorney to mitigate litigation risks, the current version appears highly unprofessional and inconsistent with our established standards. I strongly urge you to reconsider publishing the report as it stands.”

In the email, Cook also raised concerns that the LAFD’s final report would be at odds with a report on the January wildfires commissioned by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office, which has yet to be released.

“I am concerned that substantial disparities may exist between the two reports,” Cook wrote.

Izzy Gardon, a spokesperson for Newsom, said in a statement Tuesday, “The Governor commissioned an independent review by the world’s leading fire safety experts to ensure the public receives a complete, accurate, and unvarnished accounting of the events leading up to the Palisades fire and how responding agencies carried out their response.”

Cook — who emails show provided a final draft of the after-action report to Villanueva in August — has declined to comment. Attempts to reach Villanueva were unsuccessful.

The LAFD has refused to answer questions from The Times about the deletions and revisions. Mayor Karen Bass’ office said the LAFD wrote and edited the report, and that the mayor did not demand changes.

On Sunday, The Times reported that Cook was upset about the changes to the report. The previous day, The Times had disclosed the watering down of the after-action report after analyzing seven drafts obtained through a public records request. The most significant changes involved the LAFD’s failure to order firefighters to stay on duty for an additional shift and to fully pre-deploy engines in high-risk areas before the Jan. 7 fire, as the wind warnings became increasingly dire. It’s unclear who exactly directed the revisions.

Cook’s Oct. 8 email laying out his concerns in stark language adds to the growing evidence that city and LAFD officials attempted to burnish the LAFD’s image in a report that should have been an honest assessment of the department’s failings in preparing for and fighting the fire, which killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes. The goal of such a report is to prevent similar mistakes.

Cook’s email reached Bass’ office in mid-November, according to Bass spokesperson Clara Karger.

Karger said last week that “the Mayor has inquired with Chief Moore about the concerns,” referring to Jaime Moore, who became LAFD chief last month.

The Times submitted a public records request last month for all of the mayor’s emails about the after-action report, a request that the city has not yet fulfilled. Bass’ office provided Cook’s email to The Times on Tuesday.

The city had withheld Cook’s email from its response to a separate records request filed by an unknown party in October. Almost 180 of Cook’s emails were posted on the city’s records portal on Dec. 9, but the one that expressed his concerns about the report was missing. That email was only posted on the portal Tuesday, after The Times asked about it.

The LAFD did not respond to a Times query about why the email was not released with Cook’s other emails. Bass’s office also did not respond to a query about Cook’s concerns and the fact that they were withheld from the public.

Gene Cameron, who lived in the Palisades for 50 years before his home burned down in the Jan. 7 fire, was disturbed by the LAFD’s revisions, which he said amounted to a cover up.

“I appreciate his bravery to stand up against these unprofessional immoral edits,” he said of Cook, adding that the point of the report is not to assign blame, but to prevent future mistakes. “It’s just to establish a set of rules, procedures and guidelines so that this doesn’t happen again.”

City Councilmember Traci Park, whose district includes the Palisades, said in a statement Tuesday that the city can’t fix systemic failures or rebuild public trust without full transparency.

“I’ve said from the beginning that LAFD should not be investigating itself. After a disaster of this magnitude, the public deserves a full, unfiltered accounting of what went wrong and why — and my independent after-action report will provide exactly that,” she said, referring to a report she requested that the City Council approved and funded earlier this year, though it hasn’t been completed.

Genethia Hudley Hayes, president of the Board of Fire Commissioners, did not immediately respond Tuesday to a request for comment. She previously told The Times that she heard rumors that the author of the report was unhappy, but that she did not look into the matter.

A July email thread reviewed by The Times shows concern over how the after-action report would be received, with the LAFD forming a “crisis management workgroup.”

“The primary goal of this workgroup is to collaboratively manage communications for any critical public relations issue that may arise. The immediate and most pressing crisis is the Palisades After Action Report,” LAFD Asst. Chief Kairi Brown wrote in an email to eight other people.

“With significant interest from media, politicians, and the community, it is crucial that we present a unified response to anticipated questions and concerns,” Brown wrote. “By doing so, we can ensure our messaging is clear and consistent, allowing us to create our own narrative rather than reactive responses.”

Cook was not included on that email thread. It’s unclear how much of a role, if any, that group had on the revisions.

The after-action report has been widely criticized for failing to examine a New Year’s Day fire that later reignited into the Palisades fire. Bass has ordered the LAFD to commission an independent investigation into its missteps in putting out the earlier fire.

One edit to the after-action report involved language stating that the decision to not fully staff up and pre-deploy all available crews and engines ahead of the extreme wind forecast “did not align” with the department’s policy and procedures during red flag days.

The final report did not include that language, saying instead that the number of engine companies rolled out ahead of the fire “went above and beyond the standard LAFD pre-deployment matrix.”

A section on “failures” was renamed “primary challenges,” and an item saying that crews and leaders had violated national guidelines on how to avoid firefighter deaths and injuries was scratched.

Another passage that was deleted said that some crews waited more than an hour for an assignment the day of the fire.

Two drafts contain notes typed in the margins with suggestions that seemed intended to soften the report’s effect and make the Fire Department look good. One note proposed replacing the image on the cover page — which showed palm trees on fire against an orange sky — with a “positive” one, such as “firefighters on the frontline.” The final report’s cover displays the LAFD seal.

The final version listed only 42 items in the section on recommendations and lessons learned, while the first version reviewed by The Times listed 74.

The author of the Los Angeles Fire Department’s after-action report on the Palisades fire was upset about changes made to the report, without his involvement, that downplayed the failures of city and LAFD leaders in preparing for and fighting the disastrous Jan. 7 fire, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

The author’s complaints reached Mayor Karen Bass’ office in mid-November, after the LAFD had publicly released the report, said Clara Karger, a spokesperson for Bass.

“The Mayor has inquired with Chief Moore about the concerns,” Karger said last week, referring to LAFD Chief Jaime Moore.

The sources, who requested anonymity to protect their relationships with the LAFD and city officials, said the report by Battalion Chief Kenneth Cook was intended to be a final draft. Cook declined to comment.

The Times posted an article Saturday that analyzed seven drafts of the after-action report, obtained through a public records request. The most significant changes involved the LAFD’s deployment decisions before the fire, as the wind warnings became increasingly dire.

In one instance, LAFD officials removed language saying that the decision to not fully staff up and pre-deploy all available crews and engines ahead of the extreme wind forecast “did not align” with the department’s policy and procedures during red flag days.

Instead, the final report said that the number of engine companies rolled out ahead of the fire “went above and beyond the standard LAFD pre-deployment matrix.”

The deletions and revisions have drawn criticism from some who questioned the LAFD’s ability to acknowledge its mistakes before and during the blaze — and to avoid repeating them in the future.

In the months since the fire, residents who lost their homes have expressed outrage over unanswered questions and contradictory information about how top LAFD officials prepared for the dangerous weather forecast and how they handled a smaller New Year’s Day blaze, called the Lachman fire, which rekindled into the massive Palisades fire six days later.

On Saturday, after the report by The Times was published online, City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez issued a statement about the toning down of the after-action report.

“Today’s reporting makes clear that accountability is optional when after-action reports are conducted in-house with oversight by political appointees,” Rodriguez said. “If these reports are purposefully watered down to cover up failures, it leaves Angelenos, firefighters, and city officials without a full understanding of what happened and what needs to change. After-action reports must be independent to ensure honest assessments in order to avoid repeating disastrous errors and to protect our communities in the future.”

Former interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva, who oversaw the completion of the report before it was made public in October, did not respond to requests for comment.

Karger, the Bass spokesperson, said this month that the report “was written and edited by the Fire Department.” Bass’ office did not demand changes to the drafts and asked the LAFD to confirm only the accuracy of items such as how the weather and the department’s budget factored into the disaster, Karger said in an email.

The LAFD has refused to answer questions about the revisions and Cook’s concerns, citing an ongoing federal court case. Federal prosecutors have charged a former Palisades resident with setting the Lachman fire.

David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, said it’s “disingenuous” of LAFD officials to cite the investigation as a reason they can’t respond to The Times’ inquiries.

“There’s nothing about the existence of a federal investigation that prohibits them from commenting,” Loy said. “They just choose not to comment.”

Three of the seven drafts of the after-action report obtained by The Times are marked with dates: Two versions are dated Aug. 25, and there is a draft from Oct. 6, two days before the LAFD released the final report to the public.

Some drafts of the after-action report described an on-duty LAFD captain calling Fire Station 23 in the Palisades on Jan. 7 to report that “the Lachman fire started up again,” indicating the captain’s belief that the Palisades fire was caused by a reignition of the earlier blaze.

The reference was deleted in one draft, then restored in the public version, which contains only a brief mention of the Lachman fire. Some have said that the after-action report’s failure to thoroughly examine the Lachman fire reignition was designed to shield LAFD leadership and the Bass administration from criticism and accountability.

Weeks after the report’s release, The Times reported that a battalion chief ordered firefighters to roll up their hoses and leave the burn area on Jan. 2, even though they had complained that the ground was still smoldering and rocks remained hot to the touch. Another battalion chief assigned to the LAFD’s risk management section knew about the complaints for months, but the department kept that information out of the after-action report.

After The Times’ report, Bass asked Villanueva to “thoroughly investigate” the LAFD’s missteps in putting out the Lachman fire.

Moore, an LAFD veteran who became chief last month, has been tasked with commissioning the independent investigation that Bass requested.

Several key items were wholly deleted from the after-action report. The final version listed only 42 items in the section on recommendations and lessons learned, while the first version reviewed by The Times listed 74.

A section on “failures” was renamed “primary challenges,” and an item saying that crews and leaders had violated national guidelines on how to avoid firefighter deaths and injuries was scratched.

Another passage that was deleted said that some crews waited more than an hour for an assignment the day of the fire.

Two drafts contain notes typed in the margins with suggestions that seemed intended to soften the report’s effect and burnish the Fire Department’s image. One note proposed replacing the image on the cover page — which showed palm trees on fire against an orange sky — with a “positive” one, such as “firefighters on the frontline.” The final report’s cover displays the LAFD seal.

In addition to the mayor’s office, Cook’s concerns made their way to the president of the Board of Fire Commissioners, which provides civilian oversight for the LAFD. Genethia Hudley Hayes, president of the board, told The Times that she heard rumors that the author of the report was unhappy, but that she did not seriously look into the matter.

“If I had to worry about every rumor that comes out of LAFD, I would spend my entire day, Monday through Friday, chasing down rumors,” she said.

She said she raised concerns with Villanueva and the city attorney’s office over the possibility that “material findings” were or would be changed.

“I did not feel like they were lying about anything,” she said. “I didn’t feel like they were trying to cover up anything.”

Pringle is a former Times staff writer.

What do fallen empires leave behind? Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida’s new work of fiction attempts to answer that question. “Three Stories of Forgetting” probes the inner worlds of three men scarred by their participation in Portugal’s history of rapacious colonialist intervention that ended in 1999. For nearly 600 years, the European republic was involved in a bloody land grab that at its peak controlled over 5.5 million square miles across Africa, Asia and the Americas.

Pereira de Almeida’s protagonists — Celestino, a slave trader; Boa Morte, a former soldier who had been conscripted to fight his fellow Africans in the Guinea-Bissau War of Independence; and Bruma, an elderly plantation worker — live in a liminal state between past and present, searching for some measure of solace in a world that offers none. I chatted with Pereira de Almeida, who was born in Angola but was reared in Lisbon, about her haunting triptych of stories.

✍️ Author Chat

Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida is author of “Three Stories of Forgetting,” a new novel exploring the legacies of slavery, colonialism, and the Portuguese Empire.

(Humberto Brito)

Three stories of forgetting … but nothing is forgotten among these men.

All three men are tormented by what they can’t forget, although they don’t feel exactly guilty, in the case of Celestino and Boa Morte. Bruma is a different story. The “forgetting” of the title relates to the omission of the figures who do not appear in the book, or who appear only occasionally, episodically. Those who are forgotten are the victims and their story. These three stories are also chapters of a more general story of violence, that of colonialism, whose victims are largely forgotten to this day.

Boa Morte, a valet in Lisbon, carries an enormous burden of guilt; in order to expiate it, he tries to save a young street vagrant. Of course, all attempts at redemption in the book are futile — why is that?

I don’t think redemption is as common as much of today’s fiction seems to suggest. The experience of guilt or of an existence haunted by ghosts seems more common to me. Boa Morte was forgotten by Portugal, the country for which he gave his life, and his hateful behavior left him utterly alone. What would redeem his life? Boa Morte is inspired by a man I knew who became my friend and lived on the streets of Lisbon, just like the character. One day, he was found dead in an alley. Not all lives know redemption.

The three protagonists are captives of their pasts, because the past is still present. Can you speak to that?

After reading [British philosopher] Peter Geach’s sentence that opens his book “The Virtues,” I became interested in inquiring into the lives of people who may be, so to speak, “dead in the eyes of God.” The problem with this possibility, however, is that we may die in the eyes of God early in life, without knowing it, and yet live to old age and remain here.

This sentence is important to me, regardless of its religious meaning. It is important in that it opens up the possibility that we may have exhausted our share of grace in life and, as humans, need to keep going.

All three of these characters are looking for some kind of solace — whether it’s reverting to some kind of quiet life among living things that don’t talk back, or building a lean-to as a kind of sanctuary.

Perhaps these places they seek are, in very different ways, the only possible remnants of rest: and also places where questions have ceased. Among living things that don’t talk there are no witnesses, there is no guilt.

You can’t write stories like these without some degree of empathy — do you feel sorry for these men? What do you feel for them as a writer?

I agree with that. I don’t feel sorry for them, but I tried to get closer to them and understand them, without imposing my ideas and opinions on them, something I don’t like to do when I write novels. Instead, I preferred, as I usually prefer, to fly around them like an insect, to study them, to let them talk to me: It is a non-imposing approach, which lets the characters speak. In general, I tend to be interested in characters I don’t like and who wouldn’t treat me with the kindness I show them. It’s my way of seeking justice, in its contradictions, and of exploring ambiguity in human behavior: I want to create hospitality, and that means being able to extend my hospitality to characters whose deeds I condemn.

(This Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)

📰 The Week(s) in Books

Carolyn Kellogg, Bethanne Patrick and Mark Athitakis select the best books of the year for The Times.

(Photo illustration by Josep Prat Sorolla / For The Times; book jackets from Scribner, Riverhead and Penguin Press)

Jim Ruland talked to Thurston Moore about his new book that chronicles the Sonic Youth guitarist’s love of free jazz. “I go out with my band and I play typical band gigs,” says Moore, “but I prefer being in a basement with a free jazz drummer any day of the week.”

Mark Athitakis finds favor with W. David Marx’s “Blank Space,” a sharp critique that maps the decline of our present culture, as well as Adam Morgan’s biography of 20th century literary firebrand Margaret C. Anderson, a trailblazer who bucked the prevailing culture to champion challenging art, including Joyce’s “Ulysses.” “If we want more works like ‘Ulysses’ in our world (and far less cringe) … it will demand a stubbornness from creators and dedication from consumers that the current moment is designed to strip from us,” Athatakis writes.

Finally, three critics weigh in on the 15 best books of 2025, while Mariella Rudi ticks off the nine best celebrity memoirs of the year.

📖 Bookstore Faves

Apollo, one of two bookstore cats, sleeping in a box at the Iliad bookstore in North Hollywood.

(Gerard Burkhart / For The Times)

The San Fernando Valley has lost many of its beloved bookshops over the last two decades, but North Hollywood’s Iliad bookshop remains. The store, which first opened its doors 28 years ago and remains the greatest purveyor of used books in all of Los Angeles, is the kind of tangled labyrinth teeming with titles that one can get lost in for hours. I spoke with Dan Weinstein about what is moving out of the doors this holiday season.

What is selling in the Christmas rush this year?

We tend to sell the same kinds of titles all year round, so it’s standard literature, science fiction and the handful of authors we can’t keep on the shelves: Octavia Butler, Charles Bukowski, Sarah J. Maas and Brandon Sanderson. Also, a lot of gift cards! Actually, January is our strongest month for sales — winter kicks in and people like to stay at home and read.

Full disclosure: I’ve been a loyal Iliad customer since the ’90s. Do you tend to see the same faces across the years?

Oh, we have very serious hardcore customers that come over and over again. Some of them even come on a daily basis. Fortunately, we are always putting good new inventory out.

What about Hollywood business? You have a tremendous inventory of art and photography books. Do set designers come in to find inspiration?

We do sell a lot to the entertainment industry. That really keeps us alive. If we were doing business in a city other than Los Angeles, I don’t think we would do nearly as well.

The Iliad Bookshop is located in North Hollywood at 5400 Cahuenga Blvd.

(Please note: The Times may earn a commission through links to Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.)