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.
He did the right thing. He probably blew up his career and in a political climate where California voters seem to reward little else than leftist virtue signaling, that may prove fatal, but he did the right thing.
Because we know why this happened.
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.”
The Los Angeles Fire Department has faced criticism for not fully extinguishing the Lachman fire. In October, The Times reported that a battalion chief ordered firefighters to roll up their hoses and leave the burn area Jan. 2, even though crews warned that the ground was still smoldering. The LAFD also decided not to use thermal imaging technology to detect heat underground.
The LAFD was run by three lesbians named Kirsten. Systemic wokeness was the number one item on the agenda. The people in charge were glorified EMS paramedics who were there because of their race, gender, sexuality, etc…
After her appointment, Fire Chief Crowley vowed to prioritize a “work environment that is free of harassment, discrimination and hazing” and promised to build a new era of the LAFD through “the creation of systemic equity and inclusion across the LAFD.”
Systemic equity and inclusion kills.
The LAFD’s job wasn’t putting out fires, it was implementing leftist agenda items. And so LA burned.
