Why LAFD Refused to Put Out LA Wildfires: “Heck No That Area is Full of Endangered Plants.”

[rangerrebew]

Why LAFD Refused to Put Out LA Wildfires: “Heck No That Area is Full of Endangered Plants.”
“I would be a real idiot to ever put a dozer in that area. I’m so trained.”
December 29, 2025 by Daniel Greenfield 1 Comment

Newsletter

The Los Angeles wildfires were absolutely catastrophic and absolutely predictable. Since Day 1, Mayor Karen Bass, the woke identity politics figures running the fire department, the Department of Water and Power, and the entire corrupt system have been lying, obfuscating and trying to cover up what happened. And Gov. Gavin Newsom, the man at the top of the state, is fine with it.

Everyone with the least bit of decency whom they drag into their vortex of lies, beginning with the man who was supposed to be in charge of rebuilding, to the author of their report on the cause of the fires, has wanted out.

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.”

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.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/why-lafd-refused-to-put-out-la-wildfires-heck-no-that-area-is-full-of-endangered-plants/

[PeteS in CA]

Since that article is padded into meaninglessness and burying its supposed point:

Insert Completely Gobsmacked Pacific Palisades Fire Headline Here

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2025/12/29/insert-completely-gobsmacked-pacific-palisades-fire-headline-here-n4947633

A batch of just-released text messages and other communications between California officials and the Los Angeles Fire Department from the run-up to the Pacific Palisades Fire reveals a system more concerned with a few endangered plants than with massive destruction and death.

Twelve people died in the fires during three weeks of January 2025, with 6,837 structures destroyed (and another thousand or so damaged), more than 23,000 acres burned, and total damages currently estimated at about $25 billion with a B in the Palisades, Topanga, and Malibu areas of Los Angeles County.

We learned why on Saturday in a Los Angeles Times report so shocking that it led to a city-wide epidemic of shattered teeth from jaws hitting the floor at velocities approaching the speed of light.

An hour after midnight Jan. 1, as a small brush fire blazed across Topanga State Park, a California State Parks employee texted the Los Angeles Fire Department’s heavy equipment supervisor to find out if they were sending in bulldozers.

“Heck no that area is full of endangered plants,” Capt. Richard Diede replied at 9:52 a.m, five hours after LAFD declared the fire contained.

“I would be a real idiot to ever put a dozer in that area,” he wrote. “I’m so trained.”

To be honest, I'm surprised the California State Parks employee had the temerity to make that request. Refusing to clear underbrush and other fuel has been forest manglement orthodoxy for the Feds and the state for decades, in collusion with enviros.

[Cyber Liberty]

End result:  All those endangered plants got destroyed anyway, and a lot more.

[DefiantMassRINO]

I hope the plants were fire resistant.  If they are native plants, they should be used to wildfire cycles, and have adapted accordingly.

The failures of Government to provide for public safety in Cali wildfires, Maui wildfire, and Texas  summer flood, should wake up the nation that our country is being run by nitwits whose stupidity, sloth, and misplaced priorities are putting us all at risk.

Competent, functioning Government matters.