fire

For months after the Palisades fire, many who had lost their homes eagerly awaited the Los Angeles Fire Department’s after-action report, which was expected to provide a frank evaluation of the agency’s handling of the disaster.

A first draft was completed by August, possibly earlier.

And then the deletions and other changes began — behind closed doors — in what amounted to an effort to downplay the failures of city and LAFD leadership in preparing for and fighting the Jan. 7 fire, which killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes, records obtained by The Times show.

In one instance, LAFD officials removed language saying that the decision not to 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.”

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

Other changes in the report, which was overseen by then-interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva, seemed similarly intended to soften its impact and burnish the Fire Department’s image. Two drafts contain notes written in the margins, including a suggestion to replace 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 note said. The final report’s cover displays the LAFD seal.

The Times obtained seven drafts of the report through the state Public Records Act. Only three of those drafts 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.

No names are attached to the edits. It is unclear if names were in the original documents and had been removed in the drafts given to The Times.

The deletions and revisions are likely to deepen concerns over the LAFD’s ability to acknowledge its mistakes before and during the blaze — and to avoid repeating them in the future. Already, Palisades fire victims have expressed outrage over unanswered questions and contradictory information about the LAFD’s preparations after the dangerous weather forecast, including how fire officials handled a smaller New Year’s Day blaze, called the Lachman fire, that rekindled into the massive Palisades fire six days later.

Some drafts 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 otherwise contains only a brief mention of the previous 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 Mayor Karen 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, which federal authorities say was intentionally set.

“A full understanding of the Lachman fire response is essential to an accurate accounting of what occurred during the January wildfires,” Bass wrote.

Fire Chief Jaime Moore, who started in the job last month, has been tasked with commissioning the independent investigation that Bass requested.

The LAFD did not answer detailed questions from The Times about the altered drafts, including queries about why the material about the reignition was removed, then brought back. Villanueva did not respond to a request for comment.

A spokesperson for Bass said her office did not demand changes to the drafts and only asked the LAFD to confirm the accuracy of items such as how the weather and the department’s budget factored into the disaster.

“The report was written and edited by the Fire Department,” the spokesperson, Clara Karger, said in an email. “We did not red-line, review every page or review every draft of the report. We did not discuss the Lachman Fire because it was not part of the report.”

Genethia Hudley Hayes, president of the Board of Fire Commissioners, told The Times that she reviewed a paper copy of a “working document” about a week before the final report was made public. She said she raised concerns with Villanueva and the city attorney’s office over the possibility that “material findings” were or would be changed. She also said she consulted a private attorney about her “obligations” as a commissioner overseeing the LAFD’s operations, though that conversation “had nothing to do with the after-action” report.

Hudley Hayes said she noticed only small differences between the final report and the draft she reviewed. For example, she said, “mistakes” had been changed to “challenges,” and names of firefighters had been removed.

“I was completely OK with it,” she said. “All the things I read in the final report did not in any way obfuscate anything, as far as I’m concerned.”

She reiterated her position that an examination of missteps during the Lachman fire did not belong in the after-action report, a view not shared by former LAFD chief officers interviewed by The Times.

“The after-action report should have gone back all the way to Dec. 31,” said former LAFD Battalion Chief Rick Crawford, who retired from the agency last year and is now emergency and crisis management coordinator for the U.S. Capitol. “There are major gaps in this after-action report.”

Former LAFD Asst. Chief Patrick Butler, who is now chief of the Redondo Beach Fire Department, agreed that the Lachman fire should have been addressed in the report and said the deletions were “a deliberate effort to hide the truth and cover up the facts.”

He said the removal of the reference to the LAFD’s violations of the national Standard Firefighting Orders and Watchouts was a “serious issue” because they were “written in the blood” of firefighters killed in the line of duty. Without citing the national guidelines, the final report said that the Palisades fire’s extraordinary nature “occasionally caused officers and firefighters to think and operate beyond standard safety protocols.”

The final after-action report does not mention that a person called authorities to report seeing smoke in the area on Jan. 3. The LAFD has since provided conflicting information about how it responded to that call.

Villanueva told The Times in October that firefighters returned to the burn area and “cold-trailed” an additional time, meaning they used their hands to feel for heat and dug out hot spots. But records showed they cleared the call within 34 minutes.

Fire officials did not answer questions from The Times about the discrepancy. In an emailed statement this week, the LAFD said crews had used remote cameras, walked around the burn site and used a 20-foot extension ladder to access a fenced-off area but did not see any smoke or fire.

“After an extensive investigation, the incident was determined to be a false alarm,” the statement said.

The most significant changes in the various iterations of the after-action report involved the LAFD’s deployment decisions before the fire, as the wind warnings became increasingly dire.

In a series of reports earlier this year, The Times found that top LAFD officials decided not to staff dozens of available engines that could have been pre-deployed to the Palisades and other areas flagged as high risk, as it had done in the past.

One draft contained a passage in the “failures” section on what the LAFD could have done: “If the Department had adequately augmented all available resources as done in years past in preparation for the weather event, the Department would have been required to recall members for all available positions unfilled by voluntary overtime, which would have allowed for all remaining resources to be staffed and available for augmentation, pre-deployment, and pre-positioning.” The draft said the decision was an attempt to be “fiscally responsible” that went against the department’s policy and procedures.

That language was absent in the final report, which said that the LAFD “balanced fiscal responsibility with proper preparation for predicted weather and fire behavior by following the LAFD predeployment matrix.”

Even with the deletions, the published report delivered a harsh critique of the LAFD’s performance during the Palisades fire, pointing to a disorganized response, failures in communication and chiefs who didn’t understand their roles. The report found that top commanders lacked a fundamental knowledge of wildland firefighting tactics, including “basic suppression techniques.”

A paperwork error resulted in the use of only a third of the state-funded resources that were available for pre-positioning in high-risk areas, the report said. And when the fire broke out on the morning of Jan. 7, the initial dispatch called for only seven engine companies, when the weather conditions required 27.

There was confusion among firefighters over which radio channel to use. The report said that three L.A. County engines showed up within the first hour, requesting an assignment and receiving no reply. Four other LAFD engines waited 20 minutes without an assignment.

In the early afternoon, the staging area — where engines were checking in — was overrun by fire.

The report made 42 recommendations, ranging from establishing better communication channels to more training. In a television interview this month, Moore said the LAFD has adopted about three-quarters of them.

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s Noah Goldberg giving you the latest on city and county government.

At her official campaign launch Dec. 13, Mayor Karen Bass told Angelenos that they face a simple decision.

After speaking about the Palisades fire, federal immigration raids and the homelessness and affordability crises, she turned to the primary election next June.

“This election will be a choice between working people and the billionaire class who treat public office as their next vanity project,” Bass told a crowd of a few hundred people at Los Angeles Trade Technical-College.

Attendees take their picture against a “photo booth” wall at Mayor Karen Bass’ reelection campaign kickoff rally.

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

In one sentence, without uttering a single name, the mayor appeared to be taking a shot at three different men. Was she talking about President Trump? Mayoral hopeful Austin Beutner? Her previous opponent, the billionaire developer Rick Caruso?

Or how about all of the above, suggested Bass’ campaign spokesperson, Doug Herman.

The billionaire class certainly includes Caruso, who self-funded his 2022 campaign to the tune of more than $100 million. It also includes Trump, who the New York Times estimated could be worth more than $10 billion. Though the mayor is not running against Trump, she likes to cast herself in opposition him. And Beutner, a former Los Angeles schools superintendent, was once an investment banker, Herman pointed out.

Beutner confirmed to The Times that he is not a billionaire. To the contrary, Beutner said, he drives a 10-year-old Volkswagen Golf.

Herman said Angelenos don’t care if Beutner has billions or just a lot of millions.

“Whether you’re a billionaire or multimillionaire is not really important to someone having trouble getting by and playing by the rules,” Herman told The Times.

“I’m trying to find the polite words,” Beutner said when asked about Bass’ comments. “Frankly, I think it’s an attempt to distract people from her record or lack thereof.”

Caruso declined to comment.

In a speech at Bass’ campaign launch, City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez hammered the same point as the mayor.

City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez shows his support during Mayor Karen Bass’ reelection campaign kickoff rally at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College.

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

“We’re always going to have rich old white men, the millionaires and billionaires — they think they can do it better,” he said. “They didn’t get it last time, and they’re not going to get it this time.”

Then, Soto-Martínez seemed to reference Beutner.

“Do you want a healthcare worker over a hedge fund manager?” he asked the crowd, to roaring applause (Bass used to work as a physician’s assistant, while Beutner founded the investment banking advisory group Evercore Partners).

With Bass’ reelection campaign underway, Beutner challenging her as a moderate and community organizer Rae Huang running to her left, Caruso could be the last major domino left to fall.

The Grove and Americana at Brand developer, who has been mulling a run for either governor or mayor (or neither), still has not revealed his plans for 2026.

Karen Bass supporters created signs for her reelection campaign kickoff rally.

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

Stuart Waldman, president of the Valley Industry & Commerce Assn., was among the diverse array of Bass supporters gathered on stage at Trade-Tech to voice their endorsements.

Waldman told The Times that he is supporting the mayor in his personal capacity, though VICA has not yet endorsed.

In 2022, Waldman and VICA supported Caruso, and Waldman spoke at some Caruso events.

He said he switched to Bass this time partly because of his unhappiness with the $30-minimum wage for airport and hotel workers passed by the City Council earlier this year. Businesses cannot move quickly enough to raise worker wages without laying off other workers, he said.

Waldman said that Bass arranged for him to meet with Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who then introduced a motion that would phase in the minimum wage increase over a longer period. The current law brings the wage up to $30 by 2028, while Harris-Dawson wants the $30 minimum to start in 2030.

“Bass was instrumental in making that happen, and we appreciate that,” Waldman said.

Harris-Dawson, a Bass ally, was at the campaign kickoff but did not make a speech.

Some were not pleased with his minimum wage proposal. Yvonne Wheeler, who is president of the Los Angeles County Federal of Labor and was at the Bass event, called it “shameful.” Soto-Martínez, who co-sponsored the minimum wage ordinance, also opposes Harris-Dawson’s proposal.

Waldman said that Soto-Martínez refused to take a meeting with him during the minimum wage fight.

“Hugo and I come from two different worlds and see the world differently,” Waldman said. “Unfortunately, I am willing to talk to everybody, and he is not.”

But at the Bass campaign launch, the two men delivered speeches one right after the other. Waldman said the diversity of opinion among the mayor’s supporters is a good sign for her.

“It’s a broad coalition,” he said.

State of play

— AFTER THE FIRES: The Times posted a project called “After the Fires” online Wednesday, nearly a year after the Palisades and Eaton fires. The stories, which document mayoral missteps, changes at the LAFD, failed emergency alerts and more, will be published as a special section in Sunday’s print edition.

— VEGAS, BABY: Councilmember John Lee is facing a steep fine for his notorious 2017 trip to Las Vegas, with the city’s Ethics Commission saying he must pay $138,424 in a case involving pricey meals, casino chips and expensive nightclub “bottle service.” The commission doled out a punishment much harsher than that recommended by an administrative law judge. Lee vowed to keep fighting, calling the case “wasteful and political.”

— EX-MAYOR FOR GOVERNOR: Four Los Angeles City Council members — Harris-Dawson, Heather Hutt, Bob Blumenfield and Curren Price — threw their support behind former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to be the next California governor.

— POOLS OUT FOR WINTER: City swimming pools will be closed on Fridays “until further notice,” the Department of Recreation and Parks announced Monday. “These adjustments were necessary to continue operating within our available resources,” the department said on Instagram.

— HOT MIC: Bass was caught on a hot mic ripping into the city and county responses to the January wildfires. “Both sides botched it,” she said on “The Fifth Column” podcast, after she shook hands with the host and they continued chatting. The final minutes of the podcast were later deleted from YouTube, with Bass’ team confirming that her office had asked for the segment to be removed.

— HOMELESSNESS FUNDING: The Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency on Wednesday approved nearly $11.5 million in homeless prevention funds, the largest single allocation yet for the new agency.

— A YEAR OF JIM: After more than a year as the LAPD’s top cop, Chief Jim McDonnell is receiving mixed reviews. While violent crime is at historic lows, some say the LAPD is sliding back into its defiant culture of years past.

— “CALM AMIDST CHAOS”: LAFD spokesperson Erik Scott announced this week that he has written a “frontline memoir” about the January wildfires. The book is set to be released on the one-year anniversary of the Palisades fire.

— “THE GIRLS ARE FIGHTING”: Mayor Karen Bass and L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath got into a tiff on X over homelessness. After Bass published an op-ed in the Daily News saying that the county’s new Department of Homelessness is a bad idea, the supervisor shot back, calling the mayor’s track record on homelessness “indefensible.” Following the spat, City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado posted on X, “I fear the girls are fighting.” And Austin Beutner, who is running against Bass, responded with a nearly six-minute video criticizing the mayor’s record on homelessness.

— OVERSIGHT OVER?: Experts worry that effective civilian oversight of the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department could be in jeopardy following a recent leadership exodus. A succession of legal challenges and funding cuts, coupled with what some say is resistance from county officials, raised concerns that long-fought gains in transparency are slipping away.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program did not conduct any new operations this week. The team “returned to previous Inside Safe operation locations, building relationships with unhoused Angelenos in the area to offer resources when available,” the mayor’s office said.
• On the docket next week: Mayoral candidate Rae Huang will host a text bank and volunteer meetup at Lawless Brewing on Monday, Dec. 22. The City Council remains in recess until Jan. 7.

Stay in touch

That’s it for now! We’ll be dark next week for the holidays. Send your questions, comments and gossip to LAontheRecord@latimes.com. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.

More than two months after an explosion erupted at the Chevron oil refinery in El Segundo, neither the company nor the regulators responsible for monitoring the facility have released details on the cause and the extent of the environmental fallout.

Here’s what we do know so far: Around 9:30 p.m.on Oct. 2, a large fire broke out in the southeast corner of the refinery, where Chevron turned crude oil into jet fuel. The resulting violent blast allegedly wounded several workers on the refinery grounds and rattled homes up to one mile away.

The refinery carried out emergency flaring in an effort to burn off potentially hazardous gases, as public officials told residents in neighborhoods nearby to stay indoors. That warning held until firefighters managed to extinguish the fire the following day.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District — the agency responsible for regulating the refinery’s emissions — said Chevron would submit reports detailing the potential cause of the fire and any unexpected equipment failures within 30 days. But the preliminary reports were handed in nearly a month late — and without any significant updates from what was said in the days immediately following the fire.

In those reports, Chevron said the fire was “unexpected and unforeseeable.” The cause is still under an investigation that probably won’t conclude until next month, an air district spokesperson told me recently.

Company officials said the fire significantly damaged power supply, utilities and gas collection systems in that section of the refinery. Repairs are underway but could take months. Meanwhile, the majority of the 1,000-acre refinery is operational, distilling crude oil into gasoline and diesel.

At an air district meeting on Dec. 2, Chevron asked for leniency from conducting equipment testing at the damaged wing of the refinery that is now offline, and the air district obliged.

One member of the agency’s hearing board, Cynthia Verdugo-Peralta, said she understood that the investigation was “quite involved” but stressed the need for “some type of response” from Chevron on the cause.

“I’m hoping that this will never happen again,” she said. “Hopefully this repair will indeed be a full repair and there won’t be another incident like this.”

Environmental regulators like the South Coast Air Quality Management District often rely on the very industries that they oversee to arrange for monitoring and investigations into disasters. For obvious reasons, that’s not ideal. Experts say this system of self-reporting is somewhat inevitable, given that many government agencies lack the staffing, budget and access to provide adequate oversight.

But it often leaves the public waiting for answers — and skeptical of the findings, when they finally arrive.

For example, there are still serious questions surrounding the air monitoring systems at Chevron’s El Segundo refinery that were supposed to act as a safety net for the public nearby during emergencies like the October fire.

Under state law, refineries are required to install, operate and maintain real-time fence line air monitors. Indeed, over four hours after the Oct. 2 fire at El Segundo, Chevron’s fence line air monitors detected elevated levels of volatile organic compounds, a category of quickly vaporizing chemicals that can be harmful if inhaled.

However, at the time of the incident, the refinery’s monitors oddly did not detect any elevated levels of some of the most common types chemicals that experts say would have been likely to be released during such a fire, such as cancer-causing benzene, a typical byproduct of burning fossil fuels.

Experts are now asking whether those monitors were fully functioning at the time.

Earlier this month, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District fined Chevron’s refinery in Richmond $900,000 after the agency found 20 of the oil company’s fence line monitors were not properly calibrated to detect the full range of emissions, potentially allowing excessive air pollution to go undetected and unreported.

As for the El Segundo facility, neither the South Coast air district nor the refinery could confirm whether the air monitors were working properly on Oct. 2. A spokesperson said the air district is scheduled to audit Chevron’s fence line air monitoring network sometime next year.

But it may already be too late to warn nearby communities. Since October’s explosion, there have been more than a dozen reported incidents of unplanned flaring at Chevron’s refinery in El Segundo, according to air district data.

Each one raises the question: What happened?

More news on air pollution

The holiday season is associated with fragrant candles, incense and gathering around the fireplace. But health experts say these traditions should be done in moderation to avoid respiratory risks, according to Associated Press reporter Cheyanne Mumphrey.

That’s especially true in Southern California, where the air district continues to issue no-burn advisories, prohibiting burning wood to limit unhealthy levels of soot, per Pasadena Now.

Almost a year after the Eaton and Palisades fires, the health effects from breathing wildfire smoke are still coming into focus. L.A. Times science and medicine reporter Corrine Purtill writes that emergency room visits rose 46% for heart attacks at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in the 90 days after the fires. The findings suggest the death toll could be much higher than the 31 fatalities that have been linked with the fires.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta sued the Trump administration — for the 50th time — after the suspension of $3 billion in federal funding that Congress approved for building more electric vehicle chargers, according to Times climate reporter Hayley Smith. California alone stands to lose out on $179.8 million in grants that could help reduce smog and greenhouse gases.

A few last things in climate news

The Trump administration announced it will dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, one of the world’s premier Earth science research institutions, per reporting from the New York Times. Scientists fear this could undermine weather forecasting in an age when global warming is contributing to more intense storms and other natural disasters.

A new analysis from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution found the rate of sea-level rise has more than doubled along U.S. coastlines over the last 125 years, according to Washington Post environmental reporter Brady Dennis. The research rebuts a controversial federal assessment published this summer that concluded there was no acceleration in rising ocean waters.

The U.S. and Europe continue to abandon their electric vehicle aspirations, ceding the clean car market to China, Bloomberg auto reporter Linda Lew writes. The European Commission recently scrapped an effective ban on combustion engine vehicles by 2035, and Ford Motor Co. walked away from plans to significantly overhaul its EV production — including the imminent demise of its all-electric Ford 150 Lightning truck.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.

Southern California Edison did not spend hundreds of millions of dollars on maintenance of its aging transmission lines that it told regulators was necessary and began billing to customers in the four years before the Jan. 7 wildfires, according to a Times review of regulatory filings.

Edison told state regulators in its 2023 wildfire prevention plan that it believed its giant, high-voltage transmission lines, which carry bulk power across its territory, “generally have a lower risk of ignition” than its smaller distribution wires, which deliver power to neighborhoods.

After two of the most destructive fires in the state’s history, The Times takes a critical look at the past year and the steps taken — or not taken — to prevent this from happening again in all future fires.

While it spent heavily in recent years to reduce the risk that its smaller lines would ignite fires, Edison fell behind on work and inspections it told regulators it planned on its transmission system, where some structures were a century old, according to documents.

Edison’s transmission lines are now suspected of igniting two wildfires in Los Angeles County on the night of Jan. 7, including the devastating Eaton fire, which killed 19 people and destroyed more than 9,000 homes and other structures in Altadena.

Twenty miles away, in the San Fernando Valley, terrified Sylmar residents watched a fire that night burning under the same transmission tower where the deadly Saddleridge fire ignited six years before. Firefighters put out that Jan. 7 blaze, known as the Hurst fire, before it destroyed homes.

Roberto Delgado said the 2019 Saddleridge fire started at this powerline in the hillside behind his Sylmar house. He said the January 7 Hurst began with sparks at this and another nearby powerline. Photographed in Sylmar, CA on Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2025.

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

After the fires, Edison changed course, and began spending more on its transmission lines, according to executives’ recent comments and state regulatory documents.

The utility began installing more grounding devices on its old transmission lines no longer in service, like the one suspected of igniting the Eaton fire. The company says it believes the idle line, last used 50 years ago, may have momentarily reenergized from a surge in electricity on the live lines running parallel to it, sparking the blaze. The official investigation hasn’t been released.

The added devices give unexpected power on the old lines more places to dissipate into the earth.

A helicopter transports workers during the process of removing Southern California Edison’s tower 208, which is suspected of causing the Eaton Fire, on Monday, May 5, 2025, in Pasadena, Calif.

(William Liang/For The Times)

Edison also began replacing some aging equipment. Sylmar residents said they saw workers in trucks and helicopters replacing hardware on the transmission line where they had watched early flames of both the Hurst fire and the 2019 Saddleridge blaze.

“Not until this year did we see repairs,” said Roberto Delgado, a Sylmar resident who can see Edison’s transmission towers from his home. “Obviously the maintenance in the past was inadequate.”

Jill Anderson, the utility’s chief operating officer, told regulators at an August meeting that the company replaced components prone to failure on a certain transmission line after Jan. 7. Edison later confirmed she was referring to equipment on the line running through Sylmar.

In interviews, Edison executives disputed that maintenance on the company’s transmission lines suffered before Jan. 7.

A helicopter transports workers during the process of removing Southern California Edison’s tower 208, which is suspected of causing the Eaton Fire, on Monday, May 5, 2025, in Pasadena, Calif.

(William Liang/For The Times)

“I do not think that our inspections and maintenance in the years leading up to 2025 were at depressed levels,” said Russell Archer, a top Edison regulatory lawyer.

Scott Johnson, an Edison spokesman, said: “The 13,500 people at Southern California Edison show up every day committed to the safety of the communities where we live and work. There is no higher value than safety here.”

Johnson said the utility prioritized safety both before and after the fire. For example, he said, the company increased aerial and ground inspections of transmission lines in areas at high fire risk in 2022 — and kept them at that higher level in subsequent years.

Among the company’s increased spending this year was an expensive upgrade to a transmission line that the state’s grid operator said was required to more safely shut down five critical transmission lines in L.A. County including those running through Sylmar and Eaton Canyon. That work was expected to be finished by 2023 but was still in progress on Jan. 7.

Edison didn’t preventively shut down the lines in Eaton Canyon or Sylmar on Jan. 7, but said the delayed upgrade had nothing to do with that decision. The company said the wind that night combined with other factors didn’t meet its protocol at the time for the lines to be turned off.

Some proposed maintenance changes will take years.

Work crew dismantles a section of Southern California Edison’s tower 208 which will be removed for further examination on Wednesday, May 7, 2025. The idle transmission tower is suspected of sparking the Eaton fire.

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

For example, executives recently told regulators that next year they may begin determining whether some of its 355 miles of idle transmission lines in areas at high-risk of wildfire should be removed for safety reasons. The company said 305 miles of those dormant lines run parallel to energized lines, like the one in Eaton Canyon.

Regulators at the state Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety asked Edison this summer if any of those lines posed a risk of induction, where they become energized from nearby electrified lines. Edison told them it “has not done a line by line analysis.”

Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, the utility’s parent company, acknowledged in a November interview that the company made changes after the fires, including by replacing a steel part called the y-clevis, which was found to have failed in the minutes before the 2019 Saddleridge fire.

“We saw some concerns with that so we accelerated a program to replace them,” he said.

Pizarro said he continued to back the company’s statements before Jan. 7 that it had decreased the risk that its lines would spark a wildfire by as much as 90% since 2018, including by spending billions of dollars for prevention work on its smaller distribution lines.

He called the Eaton fire “a black swan event” — one of “low probability, but high consequence.”

Aging equipment

About 13,000 miles of transmission lines carry bulk power through Edison’s territory. In comparison, it has nearly 70,000 miles of the smaller distribution lines, delivering power to homes.

Because the high-voltage transmission lines are interconnected, utilities must keep the system balanced, trying to prevent sudden increases or decreases in power. An abrupt jump in electricity flowing on one transmission line can cause surges and problems miles away.

In 2023, Edison said in a filing to the state Public Utilities Commission that the average age of its infrastructure was increasing as it replaced equipment less frequently than in previous times.

More than 90% of its transmission towers are at least 30 years old — the age when the first signs of corrosion appear, it said in a filing. Some transmission lines and pylons are nearing 100 years of service and have never had major overhauls, the company said.

Edison said it began looking for corroded transmission towers in 2020, but found so many that it temporarily stopped those evaluations in 2022 to focus on fixing those found unsafe.

In 2021, the commission’s Public Advocates Office warned that Edison wasn’t completing maintenance and upgrades that the utility said was “critical and necessary” and was authorized to bill to customers.

Edison had been under-spending on that work since 2018, staff at the Public Advocates Office wrote. They urged regulators to investigate, saying that “risks to the public are not addressed” and customers may be owed a refund.

That shortfall in spending continued through 2024.

According to a report Edison filed in April, the company did not spend hundreds of millions of dollars on transmission system work that regulators had authorized from 2021 to 2024.

Among the shortfalls was $270 million to fix thousands of deficiencies found more than a decade ago where its transmission lines hang too close to the ground, the report said. Also unspent was $38.5 million authorized for transmission operating maintenance and an additional $155 million for capital maintenance.

Edison planned to perform 57,440 detailed inspections of its transmission poles in those four years, the report said, but performed only 27,941, citing other priorities.

Edison said its inspection numbers still met state regulatory requirements.

A helicopter flies over the downtown Los Angeles skyline during a cloudy day on Monday, May 5, 2025, in Pasadena, Calif.

(William Liang/For The Times)

The utility also replaced 38% fewer substation transformers than it said it would. And while it was authorized to replace 14,280 transmission poles it restored just 10,031, the report stated.

Archer said some uncompleted work was for an inspection program using drones in areas at lower risk of fire. Instead the company focused those aerial inspections in high-risk areas, he said.

He said some shortfalls were for upgrade projects that were delayed for reasons beyond the company’s control.

Utilities are allowed to pass on the costs of approved maintenance projects to customers in the monthly rates they charge. State regulators also give them some flexibility to decide whether to spend the money on approved projects, or something else.

Archer said that most of the unspent money involved capital expenses like purchases of new transmission towers and upgrade projects. Once regulators authorize a capital project, he said, customers begin paying a small portion of the cost annually over the assets’ expected life, which is often decades. If the project is not completed, those annual payments stop, he said, adding that state regulations don’t allow Edison to issue refunds for most unspent funds.

Transmission lines known to spark deadly fires

Before Jan. 7, Edison told regulators in its wildfire mitigation plan that it had focused its prevention efforts on its smaller distribution system. It said transmission lines posed a lower threat because they were taller and had wires more widely spaced.

Yet the deadliest wildfire in state history was caused when equipment on a century-old Pacific Gas & Electric transmission tower failed. The 2018 Camp fire killed 85 people and destroyed most of the town of Paradise.

A year later, the Kincade fire in Sonoma County ignited when a steel part on a PG&E transmission line broke. Like Edison’s line in Eaton Canyon, that transmission cable was no longer serving customers.

Edison is now facing hundreds of lawsuits claiming it was negligent in maintaining its transmission lines in Eaton Canyon and for leaving the old unused line in place — allegations the company denies.

At 6:11 pm on Jan. 7, Edison recorded a fault — a sudden change in electricity flow — on a transmission line running from La Cañada Flintridge to Eagle Rock, according to its report to regulators.

Faults can be caused by lines slapping together, a piece of equipment breaking or other reasons. Edison said it did not know the cause.

The fault caused a momentary surge in current on the four live lines running through Eaton Canyon, the company said, which may have energized the idle line.

Investigators view the Edison electrical lines, transmission towers and surrounding area, which is a location that is being investigated as the possible origin of the Eaton fire in Eaton Canyon in Altadena Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2025.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

State regulations require utilities to remove old lines no longer in service. Edison says that even though it hasn’t used the line in decades it sees a need for it in the future.

Edison’s transmission manual dated December 20, 2024 states that it inspects idle lines every three years, while active ones are inspected annually.

Executives said they went beyond the manual’s requirements, inspecting the idle line in Eaton Canyon annually in the years before the fire.

Edison declined to provide records of those inspections.

Sylmar line suspected of two wildfires

Edison says it believes its transmission line running through the foothills above Sylmar was involved in the ignition of the Jan. 7 Hurst fire. But it denies the line ignited the 2019 Saddleridge fire.

The 2019 fire killed at least one and destroyed or damaged more than 100 homes and other structures.

This year, lawyers for victims of the 2019 fire argued in court the two fires started in the same way: steel equipment holding up the transmission lines broke, causing a sudden, massive surge in energy that triggered sparks and flames at two or more towers located miles away.

The lawyers say the line, constructed in 1970, is not properly grounded so that sudden increases in energy don’t disperse into the soil — a problem they say the company failed to fix.

Edison denies the claims, calling their description of the fire’s start an “exotic ignition theory…contrary to accepted scientific principles.”

A judge recently denied Edison’s request to dismiss the case.

As the Palisades fire raged, then-Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley went on a television blitz, calling out city leadership for systematically underfunding her agency.

The LAFD, she said, didn’t have enough firefighters, based at enough fire stations, to quench the wind-driven flames that were tearing through the hills.

“We need more. This is no longer sustainable,” she said in one interview Jan. 10.

Nearly a year after the fire destroyed much of the Palisades, LAFD officials continue to highlight financial concerns, with Crowley’s successor requesting a 15% budget increase and the firefighters union proposing a sales tax that could bring in an extra $300 million per year.

A Jan. 9 aerial view of neighborhoods destroyed by the Palisades fire.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

But the LAFD’s hyper-focus on money obscures its leaders’ failures in managing the resources they had, beginning with a decision to leave the scene of a New Year’s Day fire despite signs it hadn’t been fully extinguished.

Days later, that fire reignited into the Palisades fire, which killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes. Despite forecasts of catastrophically high winds, LAFD officials didn’t pre-deploy engines in the area or increase manpower by ordering a previous shift of firefighters to stay on duty.

As the flames spread, the firefighting response was disorganized and chaotic, with the LAFD’s own after-action report describing major failures by high-ranking commanders in communication, staffing and basic wildland firefighting knowledge.

City leaders have highlighted changes they have made since the fire, including appointing 30-year LAFD veteran Jaime Moore as chief and drafting new protocols for staffing on high hazard weather days.

But the question remains: Is Los Angeles prepared for the next major wildfire? Some city officials and fire experts don’t think so, pointing to an LAFD that hasn’t evolved with the times and an incomplete review of how the Palisades fire started.

Moore, who was appointed chief last month, declined to comment.

Mayor Karen Bass said in an interview earlier this month that the city is “on the path to be completely ready” for a major wildfire, with the LAFD now taking a more proactive approach to weather warnings.

“The Fire Department has been way more aggressive, has done pre-deployment, has been very visible, alerts going out early, trying to be very, very aggressive,” she said.

But Genethia Hudley Hayes, president of the Board of Fire Commissioners, said that the LAFD is still unprepared and that there hasn’t been enough time to make the necessary changes. She cited the LAFD’s technology, which she said is about two decades behind.

“I am not confident there would be a different result” if a similar disaster strikes, she said.

City Councilmember Traci Park, whose district includes Pacific Palisades and who has advocated for more Fire Department funding, agreed with Hudley Hayes.

Some essential changes have been made, such as requiring firefighters to stay for an additional shift during red flag warnings, Park said. But she said that too many fire engines are out of service, there are not enough mechanics, and most important, questions about the origin of the Palisades fire remain unanswered.

In October, after federal prosecutors charged a former Palisades resident with deliberately setting the Jan. 1 Lachman fire, 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. The Times reviewed text messages among firefighters and a third party, sent in the weeks and months after the fire, describing the crew’s concerns.

The LAFD’s after-action report, released in October, only briefly mentioned the Lachman fire. Critics have flagged this as a crucial lapse in the report, which prevents the department from figuring out what went wrong and avoiding the same mistakes.

After the Times report, Bass ordered an investigation into the LAFD’s handling of the Lachman fire.

Mayor Karen Bass, right, and then-Fire Chief Kristin Crowley speak during a news conference in January. Bass ousted Crowley less than two months after the Palisades fire.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Bass had ousted Crowley less than two months after the Palisades fire, citing the LAFD’s failure to properly deploy resources ahead of the winds and potentially have a chance to extinguish the fire before it exploded out of control, an issue that was exposed by a series of reports in The Times.

Bass also countered Crowley’s financial complaints, saying that the budget did not affect the department’s ability to fight the fire. The LAFD’s 2024-25 budget had actually increased 7% from the previous year, due in part to generous firefighter raises.

More money won’t solve bad decision-making by top officials, said Marc Eckstein, an emergency physician who served as LAFD’s medical director and commander of its emergency medical services bureau until he retired in 2021.

He said that without transparency and accountability, “the fallback is always going to be what it has been: We need more of everything — more people, more money, more fire trucks, more fire stations.”

A modern fire agency needs the flexibility to surge its staff during a disaster, he said, while also addressing day-to-day needs. Most 911 calls are for medical problems, he said, yet the LAFD functions more or less the same as it did decades ago, when structure fires were more common.

He said a panel of outside experts should have been given access to the LAFD’s records to offer an unbiased look at how the department performed leading up to and during the Palisades fire.

“And it’s a playbook. OK, how do we prevent this from happening again?” he said. “And the fact that didn’t happen is a disgrace.”

How much the department transforms after the Palisades disaster will depend, in large part, on its new chief. Moore, who joined the LAFD in 1995 and most recently was deputy chief of the Operations Valley Bureau, was chosen by Bass to lead the department over a fire chief from a major city outside California.

At stations around L.A., firefighters told Bass that they wanted an insider for the job, which she said factored into her decision.

“Given that the Fire Department was under such scrutiny, such a difficult time, morale is in the toilet, infighting that’s going on, the last thing in the world they needed, in my opinion, was somebody from the outside,” Bass told The Times.

Moore had signaled before his appointment was confirmed last month that he was troubled by the LAFD’s missteps with the Lachman fire and was going to bring in an outside organization to investigate.

But the following week, he appeared to change course, alleging that the media was trying to “smear” firefighters while saying he still planned to investigate the Lachman fire.

Moore will be in charge of implementing the 42 recommendations in the after-action report, which range from establishing better communication channels to how to defend homes where hidden embers could ignite.

The report drew the conclusion that top LAFD commanders had startlingly little knowledge about combating wildfires, including “basic suppression techniques.” It suggested that all LAFD members undergo training on key skills such as structure defense and how to draw water from swimming pools when hydrants don’t work.

In an interview with ABC7, Moore said that the LAFD has adopted about three-quarters of the recommendations and is considering creating a division specializing in wildland fires.

Members of Crew 4, the department’s new full-time wildland hand crew, practice cutting fire lines near Green Verdugo Fire Road in Sunland.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

Since the Palisades fire, the LAFD has hired a 26-member wildland hand crew that uses chainsaws and other tools to chop paths through brush to stop a fire from spreading. When they aren’t battling fires, they do brush clearance throughout the city.

Earlier this month, as hand crew members practiced cutting fire lines through the brush in Sunland, the crew’s leader, Supt. Travis Humpherys, declined to say whether they would have changed the outcome of the Palisades fire.

Travis Humpherys is the Crew 4 superintendent.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

But they have already “made a dramatic impact” with brush clearance and fighting wildfires, including a 20-acre fire in Burbank in June, Humpherys said.

Moore’s requested budget of more than $1 billion for the coming year — a 15% increase over this year’s budget — includes money for a second wildland hand crew, as well as nearly 200 additional firefighter recruits and helitanker services to attack fires from the air. That amount could be pared down during the months-long city budgeting process, as the City Council and the mayor find ways to balance the overall budget amid financial headwinds.

Meanwhile, United Firefighters of Los Angeles City Local 112 is charting an ambitious course to reduce the department’s dependency on the city budget, pushing for a ballot measure that, if approved by voters in November 2026, would raise nearly $10 billion by 2050 through a half-cent sales tax. But after the LAFD’s failures in the Palisades fire, some voters may be reluctant to entrust its leaders with more money.

“It’s hard to believe that we are fully prepared for the next major emergency,” Doug Coates, the union’s acting president, said in a statement. “We desperately need more firefighters and paramedics, more trucks, engines, and ambulances and more wildfire resources and neighborhood fire stations.”

E. Randol Schoenberg, whose family lost four homes in the fire, including his in Malibu — along with documents that belonged to his grandfather, the composer Arnold Schoenberg — said he would be happy to pay more taxes for more services.

But Schoenberg, an attorney who is representing Palisades fire victims in a lawsuit against the city and the state, said he expects the LAFD to honestly examine its mistakes.

“If they don’t really grapple with the issues of how this happened, then no matter how much money we throw at it, it’s going to happen again,” he said.

Times staff writer David Zahniser contributed to this report.

A coalition of Eaton fire survivors and community groups called on Southern California Edison on Tuesday to provide immediate housing assistance to the thousands of people who lost their homes in the Jan. 7 wildfire.

The coalition says an increasing number of Altadena residents are running out of insurance coverage that had been paying for their housing since they were displaced by the fire. Thousands of other residents had no insurance.

“When a company’s fire destroys or contaminates homes, that company has a responsibility to keep families housed until they can get back home,” said Joy Chen, executive director of the Eaton Fire Survivors Network, one of the coalition members asking Edison for emergency assistance of up to $200,000 for each family.

At the coalition’s press conference, Altadena residents spoke of trying to find a place to live after the Jan. 7 fire that killed at least 19 people and destroyed more than 9,000 homes, apartments and other structures. Thousands of other homes were damaged by smoke and ash.

Gabriel Gonzalez, center, an Eaton Fire survivor, shown with Joy Chen, Executive Director of the Eaton Fire Survivors Network (EFSN), left, and other survivors at a press conference in Altadena. They urged Southern California Edison to provide urgent housing relief to keep Eaton Fire families housed this winter.

(Gary Coronado/For The Times)

Gabriel Gonzalez said he had been living in his car for most of the last year.

Before the fire, Gonzalez had a successful plumbing company with six employees, he said. He had moved into an apartment in Altadena just a month before the fire and lost $80,000 worth of tools when the building was destroyed.

His insurance did not cover the loss, Gonzalez said, and he lost his business.

Edison is now offering to directly pay fire victims for their losses if they give up their right to file a lawsuit against the utility.

But members of the coalition say Edison’s program is forcing victims who are most desperate for financial support to give up their legal right to fair compensation.

Andrew Wessels, Strategy Director for the Eaton Fire Survivors Network, speaks about Edison’s Wildfire Recovery Compensation Plan (WRCP).

(Gary Coronado/For The Times)

“If families are pushed to give up what they are owed just to survive, the recovery will never have the funds required to rebuild homes, restore livelihoods or stabilize the community,” said Andrew Wessels. He said he and his family had lived in 12 different places since the fire left ash contaminated with lead on and in their home.

In an interview Tuesday, Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, the utility’s parent company, said the company would not provide money to victims without them agreeing to drop any litigation against the company for the fire.

“I can’t even pretend to understand the challenges victims are going through,” Pizarro said.

He said the company created its Wildfire Recovery Compensation Program to get money to victims much faster than if they filed a lawsuit and waited for a settlement.

“We want to help the community rebuild as quickly as possible,” he said.

Pizarro said Edison made its first payment to a victim within 45 days of the compensation program launching on Oct. 29. So far, he said, the company has received more than 1,500 claims.

Edison created the compensation program even though the official investigation into the cause of the fire hasn’t been released.

The company has said a leading theory is that its century-old transmission line in Eaton Canyon, which it last used in 1971, briefly became energized from the live lines running parallel to it, sparking the fire.

The program offers to reimburse victims for their losses and provides additional sums for pain and suffering. It also gives victims a bonus for agreeing to settle their claim outside of court.

Pizarro said the program is voluntary and if victims don’t like the offer they receive from Edison, they can continue their claims in court.

Edison has told its investors that it believes it will be reimbursed for all of its payments to victims and lawsuit settlements by $1 billion in customer-paid insurance and a $21 billion state wildfire fund.

Zaire Calvin, of Altadena, a survivor who has lost his home and other properties, speaks.

(Gary Coronado/For The Times)

Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawmakers created the wildfire fund in 2019 to protect utilities from bankruptcy if their electric wires cause a disastrous wildfire.

State officials say the fund could be wiped out by Eaton fire damages. While the first $21 billion was contributed half by customers of the state’s three biggest for-profit utilities and half by the companies’ shareholders, any additional damage claims from the Jan. 7 fire will be paid by Edison customers, according to legislation passed in September.

Some Altadena residents say Edison’s compensation program doesn’t pay them fully for their losses.

Damon Blount said that he and his wife had just renovated their home before it was destroyed in the fire. They don’t believe Edison’s offer would be enough to cover that work.

Blount said he “felt betrayed” by the utility.

“They literally took everything away from us,” Blount said. “Do the right thing, Edison. We want to be home.”

At the press conference, fire victims pointed out that Edison reported nearly $1.3 billion in profits last year, up from $1.2 billion in 2023.

Last week, Edison International said it was increasing the dividend it pays to its shareholders by 6% because of its strong financial performance.

“Their stock is rising,” said Zaire Calvin, one of the Altadena residents calling on Edison for emergency relief. Calvin lost his home and his sister died in the fire. “They will not pay a penny when this is over.”

Film fans like to lament: They don’t make them like they used to, specifically the kind of wry, life-affirming dramedies that director James L. Brooks perfected back in the 1980s and ’90s like “Terms of Endearment,” “Broadcast News” and “As Good as It Gets.” Movies of that tone and character are rare these days, so it’s worth noting when a new one comes along. But with Brooks’ latest, the deeply strange “Ella McCay,” he doesn’t make them like he used to either.

“Ella McCay” is a portrait of a lady on fire, from stress. The quirky, twitchy Ella (Emma Mackey, horrifically bewigged) is the youngest lieutenant governor in her unnamed state, an awkward policy wonk serving under her mentor, Gov. Bill Moore (Albert Brooks). When he’s tapped for the Cabinet, Ella gets the promotion that she craves, sworn in as the youngest female governor of her state, even as her family life descends into chaos. But Ella’s family life has always been chaotic, as we see in flashbacks to her teenage years, wherein our narrator describes how Ella experiences seeing other happy families — as a stab in the heart.

Our narrator is Estelle (Julie Kavner, best known as the voice of Marge Simpson), Ella’s secretary, who explains that she’s biased, claiming “I’m nuts about her.” The year, by the way, is 2008, “when we could still talk to each other.” So Brooks sets this political film in the recent past, giving a wide berth to the third rail that is MAGA. But by shrinking away from political hot buttons, he renders the whole gambit frustratingly vague and meaningless. Ella lives in the “state,” she runs afoul of the “party,” but skirting these details feels too timid. It’s clear that Ella’s politics are liberal, as she champions a bill designed to support parents and kids in early childhood (she tears up over “tooth tutors”). But why play coy with the specifics?

All Ella wants to do is run her policy meetings, but the men in her life keep getting in the way. First there’s her dad (Woody Harrelson), an inveterate philanderer who would like to make amends — in order to please his new girlfriend. Then there’s Ella’s agoraphobic brother (Spike Fearn), over whom she frets (the less said about his bizarrely tacked-on romantic entanglement with an ex-girlfriend played by Ayo Edebiri, the better). Then there’s her husband (Jack Lowden), a seemingly nice if cocky guy who suddenly starts to love the warmth of the spotlight as Ella ascends.

Again and again, Ella runs in circles trying to put out fires with these men without ever getting to her meetings or doing the job she claims she loves so much (and when she finally does get to her meeting, it’s a flop). The entire movie is about how men are always getting in the way of women’s work, but it’s not entirely clear that Brooks knows this is what his film is about, as Ella happily embarks on pointless side quests with her dad and brother and becomes embroiled in the tamest political sex scandal of all time. The real scandal here is why she entertains any of these losers at all.

It never feels like Brooks has a grasp on the material, which careens aimlessly through Ella’s harried day-to-day in a handsomely bland, serviceable style. The thread about Ella’s childhood trauma resulting from her parents’ messy relationship is lost — and was never that convincing to begin with. She has an unconventional family but her aunt Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis), who helped raise her, is a fierce protector and confidant. Their relationship is fun to watch, so why bother with all these men and their inane storylines? The only worthy one in Ella’s life is her designated security detail (Kumail Nanjiani). In another movie, they’d have a romance, some sexual tension or at least a heartfelt and wise conversation. Here, his character is denied any chance of that.

As we move from broken home to political scandal to another broken home, Ella finally realizes that a woman’s place is not in the capital, but rather in the nonprofit sector (not that she has much choice in the matter). What, exactly, is Brooks trying to say? We spend two hours watching men mess things up for Ella and then she just accepts it and moves on? Even if that message weren’t profoundly weird, dramatically it falls flat, despite Estelle trying to tie it up with a positive final message: “The opposite of trauma is hope.” Whatever that means. It’s apt that this closing phrase makes as much sense as the rest of the movie, which is to say, very little.

Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s Noah Goldberg, with an assist from David Zahniser, giving you the latest on city and county government.

With the 2028 Summer Olympics creeping closer, the Los Angeles City Council still has not come to an agreement with the private committee overseeing the Games over who will pay for the additional city services required to host athletes and spectators from around the world.

With hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars at stake, the city has blown past its own Oct. 1 deadline for hammering out an “Enhanced City Resources Master Agreement” contract with LA28 and is now considering filing suit.

City officials indicated the potential for a lawsuit against LA28 Monday during a meeting of the council’s ad hoc Olympics committee. In closed session, the committee conferred “with its legal counsel relative to possible initiation of litigation,” according to the meeting agenda.

But after a lengthy closed-door meeting, the committee broke without moving any closer to suing LA28.

“There was no recommendation to move forward on litigation,” said Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, who sits on the Olympic committee, in a brief interview with The Times after the closed session.

Although it remains unclear exactly why the city might sue LA28, the stakes of the negotiations between the two parties are high.

The Olympics have repeatedly been billed as a “zero cost” event for Los Angeles, with the city’s costs reimbursed by LA28 and the federal government. But depending on how “enhanced services” are defined, the city, which is facing financial headwinds, could end up bearing significant costs for services, including security, trash removal, traffic control and paramedics, that will go well beyond what it provides on typical days.

One of the biggest expenses will be security, with the LAPD, as well as a host of other local, state and federal agencies, working to keep athletes and spectators safe during the 17-day Olympics and the two-week Paralympics.

During a presentation before the council committee on Monday, City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo used the Dodgers’ 2024 World Series victory parade as an example of a similar, albeit much smaller scale, situation.

The baseball team reimbursed the city nearly $2 million for police, fire department, transportation and other services to pull off the parade safely.

Monday’s developments provided a small glimpse into the secretive negotiations between the two sides. Coupled with the missed October deadline to finalize an agreement, it was apparent that the negotiations were not going completely smoothly.

A senior city official, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations, said the city is not at an “irresolvable impasse” with LA28 but that litigation is very much on the table in an effort to make sure the city is fully reimbursed.

The city and LA28 are meeting daily to try to hash out an agreement, the source said, characterizing the negotiations as “intense and focused.”

“All parties are working actively at the table to finalize the [ECRMA] that will ensure reimbursement of the city’s costs required by the 2028 Games,” the city and LA28 said in a joint statement to The Times.

Szabo told the council committee that it’s more important to get a good deal than an on-time deal.

“This needs to be the right agreement for the city,” Szabo said.

The city also hopes to recoup some costs from the federal government. President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” included $1 billion to reimburse state and local governments for security, planning and other Olympics-related costs. But exactly what the money can be used for won’t be known until next year, Szabo said.

But the unpredictability of the Trump administration has left the city and LA28 wary about whether all the security costs will be reimbursed, said Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson.

“With this administration, you don’t know what the hell is going to happen, right?” Harris-Dawson said during the Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum Luncheon on Thursday. “So both of us [the city and LA28] are looking at a $1.5-billion bill, and we’re like, ‘Yeah, I’m not paying it. You’re gonna pay it.’”

So far, Harris-Dawson said, the federal government has been “good” about putting money aside for the Games. But that could change, Harris-Dawson said.

“I could show up here 10 days from now and the world could have turned on its head, because you just never know how the guy’s gonna wake up in the morning, or what he’s gonna see on TV to make him react,” he said of Trump. “So … it’s day to day, but on this particular issue, so far so good.”

Outside of security, LA28 should cover costs like staffing, expenses and equipment related to the Games, Szabo said.

Some don’t have high expectations that the costs will be completely footed by others. In a July letter to the city, retired civil rights attorney Connie Rice said she had heard from city employees worried that L.A. would be left with a massive bill.

What if LA28 dissolves after the Olympics — how would the city force it to provide reimbursement? Security and other city services typically extend beyond the Olympic venue itself — how large of a radius around the venue would be included in the reimbursement?

These are questions Rice feels the city has not yet answered.

“I have seen 10th-graders plan their prom better than the city is planning these Olympics,” Rice said in an interview.

State of play

— RECRUIT-GATE: Months of tension between Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and members of the City Council burst into public view Friday when the council rebuffed the mayor’s request to significantly increase police hiring. The council instead agreed to a more modest increase, which could ramp up if the city finds money for more police recruits.

— JUST A COUPLE HUNDRED MILLION OFF: L.A. County officials justified their $200-million purchase of the Gas Company Tower by claiming that seismic retrofits of their old 1960s headquarters would cost $700 million. But experts hoping to save the building now say the retrofits could cost under $150 million, using standard techniques applied to other historic L.A. buildings.

— STEP DOWN: The chief executive of Weingart Center, Kevin Murray, resigned from the L.A. County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency board amid a federal real estate investigation. Federal prosecutors say a Cheviot Hills property was purchased for $11.2 million, then flipped to Weingart for $27.3 million. Weingart used public money to finance the purchase and conversion of the site into homeless housing.

— ED1 FOREVER: The L.A. City Council approved an ordinance on Tuesday formalizing Mayor Karen Bass’ Executive Directive 1, which fast-tracks planning department approval of 100% affordable housing projects. That initiative, which began as an emergency order issued by Bass in 2022, will now be a permanent part of city law.

— CROSSWALK VIGILANTE: An activist with People’s Vision Zero was arrested and cited while painting a crosswalk at an intersection in Westwood on Sunday. The arrest marks the latest clash between the city of Los Angeles and traffic safety advocates who are frustrated by delays in marking pedestrian crossings and are taking it upon themselves to do the work they say can’t wait.

— END OF WATCH(DOG): L.A. County Inspector General Max Huntsman, who served as chief watchdog over the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department for 12 years, is retiring. In a farewell letter, he laid into county leaders, saying they ignored his office’s efforts at oversight.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program to combat homelessness went to Downtown L.A., South L.A., Exposition Park, Hollywood, Silver Lake, North Hills, Pacoima, Woodland Hills, Shadow Hills and Van Nuys this week, bringing more than 70 people inside.
• On the docket next week: The city’s Ethics Commission will meet Wednesday. The City Council is on recess until Jan. 7.

Stay in touch

That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to LAontheRecord@latimes.com. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.

Change may be the only constant, but blazing infernos tearing through Pacific Palisades, Kaskade’s home for the last 15 years, was a new kind of change for him.

After 24 days of burning, his entire life looked different. Between tours, the famed DJ and dance music producer, born Ryan Raddon, spent the majority of his time at Palisades hot spots like the Village. Now he frequents Santa Monica and Brentwood by force. Of the 30 families in his church, only four of their houses remain standing, including his. Unfortunately, his brother’s house was lost to the fires.

“The community is destroyed. It doesn’t exist anymore. It’s hard not to be angry,” Raddon says, remarking that he’s been wondering if he should stay in the Palisades. His three daughters grew up there. Does he take away their childhood home?

When asked how this sudden and unprecedented shift affected the music he made for “undux,” his first album since 2015’s “Automatic,” Raddon takes several moments to collect his thoughts.

“I’ve done quite a bit of press for this record, and you’re the first person to bring that up,” he admits. He made two attempts to write a new album in the last three years, but he was already going through personal struggles before the fires. Divorcing his wife of nearly three decades and watching two of his daughters leave home led to melancholy songs that didn’t feel right to release. Eventually, he decided to finish the body of work, no matter what.

“I need to just make this, see what it is and get through it,” Raddon says. He was able to complete it with the help of songwriters he’s known for years, such as Cayson Renshaw, Finn Bjarnson and Nate Pyfer. “It is therapeutic to sit down and work with another songwriter. [Telling them] I have a lot going on I want to write about.”

The title of the album is “undux,” pronounced “undo,” because everything going on left him feeling undone. The result is a collection of tracks that skews deeper and less euphoric than previous Kaskade albums.

Raddon ventures away from his standard four-on-the-floor house music and into broken beats on “Started Over.” Warm orchestral strings and Renshaw’s ghostly vocals serve as vehicles for big emotional builds over the scattered drums, painting a sonic picture of how messy the heavy moments can feel.

“If Only” is a clean, guitar-driven indie dance tune that directly recounts Raddon’s experience in the aftermath of the blaze: “It’s all ashes / What the hell just happened? / Somehow I’m still standing / But I’m asking what for?”

The title of Raddon’s album is “undux,” pronounced “undo,” because everything going on left him feeling undone.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

There is still music on the album befitting of Raddon’s dozens of main-stage sets he plays every year. The lead single, “DNCR,” coasts on banging piano chords and an energetic kick. But he wrote the upbeat songs after working through the taxing emotions he brought into the process.

“Any time you’re being honest, and you’re going into the studio, you can’t avoid that stuff,” Raddon says. “This was a hard record for me to make.”

When Raddon’s manager heard “undux,” he was glad Raddon was feeling better, but he also delivered a stern warning: Only die-hards would appreciate the softer approach. Labels echoed this impression before the Vancouver-based electronic powerhouse, Monstercat, signed the album.

“When I sent the record out, people generally weren’t having it,” Raddon says. “Labels that I had worked with in the past, and some other people that are making noise in the space right now, said, ‘Call us back when you’re doing dance music.’”

“Undux” includes dance music. But it’s not all peak-time bangers like his biggest hits, such as “I Remember” and “Atmosphere.” In the years following “Automatic,” most of Raddon’s output was that kind of music. Streaming shifted listening habits away from long players and toward playlists and algorithms, both of which favor singles. Singles in the dance realm historically do the best numbers-wise when they’re primed for live.

Raddon’s most extensive releases in this period were his five “Redux” EPs. The Redux project channels his earliest years of DJing, when he was focused on keeping the dance floor moving. Kaskade releases get people moving, too, but songwriting defines that music. Using lyrics and melodies to tell the type of stories he needed to share after the fires.

“Making a single’s neat, but when you sit down in the studio, there’s so much pressure. I need to be able to play this at 2 a.m. in my set. That’s a weird box to work in,” Raddon shares. “When I’m making an album, there’s no thought of that. Let me just write and create.”

“The coolest thing for me is seeing dance music get a little bit of respect. [There’s been] so much success in bringing the music to a wider audience. It’s been a long road,” Raddon says.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

It makes sense that Raddon spent so many years producing for the live space. Right around the release of “Automatic,” he started a historic run on stage. In 2015, he brought the largest audience to an EDM act in the history of Coachella. In 2021, he was the first artist to play for a public audience at SoFi Stadium. In 2022, he broke the record for the biggest electronic music headlining concert in North America at the L.A. Coliseum with Kx5, his collaborative project with deadmau5.

Raddon has also been called upon to bring his art form to professional sports. In 2024, he became the first Super Bowl in-game DJ, and that May, he was the first-ever starting grid DJ at a Formula 1 race during Miami’s grand prix.

Despite so many individual wins, Raddon is most thrilled about the positive change this “decade of triumph” represents for the entire scene. He became one of the first figures of dance music legitimacy when he broke through with his 2004 hit “Steppin’ Out.” Now dance music has three Grammy categories.

“The coolest thing for me is seeing dance music get a little bit of respect. [There’s been] so much success in bringing the music to a wider audience. It’s been a long road,” Raddon says.

Raddon has been on top of the genre throughout that long road, making him one of dance music’s only consistent superstars.

Raddon especially emphasizes the ability to adapt. He started DJing when vinyl was the only option, and he recalls when certain DJs refused to play CDs when that technology developed. Now everyone uses digital files. The same principle applies to making music. He is rather calm in the wake of AI tools (though he admits he feels at ease about it because he’s already found established success with his music).

“This train is moving. You’re getting on, or you’re not. There’s no fighting it,” Raddon says.

The loss of his community in the Palisades and the shifts in his family life may be the most difficult changes he has ever faced. But he’s still on the train moving forward with the help of the music.

The moment a deadly fire broke out at a nightclub in Goa, India, was caught on camera. The blaze killed at least 25 people, including four tourists. Authorities are investigating safety violations and the venue’s operators.