Monument Street, which runs through the heart of Pacific Palisades, tells two very different stories about the fires that engulfed the community. Meanwhile, sites where multi-million dollar homes once stood are now reduced to ashes and rubble. Meanwhile, the outdoor shopping mall, whose tenants include Chanel, men's clothing store Buck Mason and a high-end sushi restaurant, remains largely intact.
On Friday, the 1950s standard “This Could Be the Start of Something Big” blared from speakers around the mall known as Palisades Village, even though stores were closed. A large water tanker stood guard, ready in case the fire threatened the shopping district again.
As the fire raged from Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, billionaire developer Rick Caruso, who owns Palisades Village, sent in several civilian firefighters from Arizona to save the shopping center. He was consulting with security staff (and that person was Mr. Caruso). Caruso said he also tried to save a nearby home but was unsuccessful.)
Early Wednesday morning, Caruso called in a private water truck to help as fire hydrants in the area ran dry or lost pressure.
“Our property is here to stay,” Caruso, who ran for Los Angeles mayor in 2022 and lost to Karen Bass, said in an interview Wednesday. “Everything around us is gone. It's like a war zone.”
The fire destroyed more than 12,000 buildings across Los Angeles County. In the most dilapidated communities, surviving structures, like Palisades Village, stand in striking juxtaposition with the ruins just a few steps away.
As the fires continue to burn, officials and the millions of people living in Los Angeles are expressing anger, shock and frustration as the unprecedented blaze overwhelmed emergency responders.
A central question is whether city and county fire departments could have mobilized additional firefighters more quickly, and whether such quick mobilization would have prevented the fire from spreading so quickly.
But some property owners chose not to rely on public agencies and instead helped rescue Mr. Caruso's property, a much-needed resource in some of Southern California's wealthiest and most fire-threatened areas. Some people have turned to civilian firefighters, who have become more vulnerable.
Nestled in a canyon between famed neighborhoods Malibu and Santa Monica, Pacific Palisades has plenty of small-town charm, but its seven- and eight-figure mansions also include Hollywood stars and moguls. I did.
It is not yet clear what role civilian firefighters played in protecting specific businesses and homes in the Palisades. But their presence has been evident while driving around the area since the fire started. It's not just Caruso's Palisades Village, which opened in 2018.
This shopping space, with approximately 30 stores, was designed to feel like a quaint, walkable town center in a vast area where most of the landscape is dominated by cars and highways. Ta.
As local and state fire trucks were extinguishing spot fires in the Palisades on Friday, teams of civilian firefighters in white pickup trucks were also on the scene, guarding homes.
Two men who declined to be named, who often work with city government, said outside a mansion in the Palisades neighborhood that had little or no damage from the fire. He said he was protecting the They said they did not know who the owner was, only that their company, the National Wildfire Protection Service, sent them there.
Private firefighting services came into the spotlight in 2018 after TMZ reported that Kim Kardashian and Kanye West had hired private firefighters to protect their mansion in the Los Angeles suburb of Hidden Hills from the Woolsey Fire that year. Collected.
While some online criticized the couple for using their vast wealth to undermine what should be public services, Kardashian said at the time that private firefighters had saved her neighbor's home from damage. He also said.
On Tuesday night, as flames consumed much of the Palisades, real estate investment firm co-founder Keith Wasserman faced similar backlash after posting a desperate post on X.
“Can anyone afford to hire private firefighters to protect our homes?” he wrote. “We have to act fast here. All the houses in our neighborhood are on fire. We'll pay any price.”
Brian Wheelock, vice president of private firefighting company Greyback Forestry, said a two-person private fire department with one small vehicle costs $3,000 a day, but four fire trucks cost $3,000 a day. For a large crew of 20 firefighters onboard, the cost could be $10,000 a day. In Oregon. Hiring them is not as easy as posting on social media. Most companies do not work directly with homeowners.
Deborah Miley, executive director of the National Wildfire Suppression Association, which represents more than 300 private firefighting organizations, said about 45% of firefighters in the United States are currently employed in the private sector. She said most of them work as government contractors fighting wildfires, supplementing local fire departments when needed.
Some are employed by insurance companies trying to avoid big losses. AIG, Chubb, and USAA are among the insurance companies that offer homeowners insurance that includes wildfire protection.
Civilian fire team action often takes place before a wildfire reaches a property and is known as fire prevention enforcement. Days or hours before the flames arrive, vegetation should be cleared, flame retardants applied, and vents sealed with fireproof tape.
“We're making the buildings viable so the fire can get through,” said David Torgerson, founder of Montana-based Wildfire Defense Systems.
As wildfires have increased in intensity and frequency over the past few decades, demand for private fire services has increased, a trend that Miley, Wheelock and Torgerson acknowledge. But public backlash was so great that California passed a law regulating the industry in 2018.
The law requires contract firefighters to coordinate with the public fire agency's incident commander during wildfires. It prohibits people from driving vehicles with insignia that suggest they are official emergency personnel or using emergency lights or sirens. Since the law was enacted, many private companies have ceased providing services directly to homeowners in the state.
Mount Adams Wildfire, a private firefighting organization based in Northern California, is among those that have exited that market. Don Holter, one of the company's owners, said it has become very difficult to work directly with homeowners.
“You have to deal with government agencies that show up, and that's more of a hassle than anything,” he says. The company currently operates only through government contracts.
Access to water, particularly whether private firefighters can use public hydrants during wildfires, is another consideration, a recurring concern among critics of private firefighting. In the early days of the Los Angeles fires, many fire hydrants ran dry due to the high demand for water from city and county firefighters.
Civilian crews often ride in trucks, which can carry hundreds of gallons of water, Wheelock said. Wiley said when his team works remotely, they draw water from nearby ponds or lakes. In more developed areas, Holter said, his team often pumped water from residents' pools and then used fire hydrants to refill them.
As hell races through Runyon Canyon in the Hollywood Hills, Adam Lever, a Hollywood talent manager who represents Miley Cyrus, calls for civilian fighters to save his home.
He said he is paying a company called All Risk Shield $6,000 a year after the 2024 Rhine fire and is grateful to former firefighters who came to the rescue as he and his family evacuated. spoke.
“I did what every human being on earth would do,” he said in an interview. “I was 1000 percent sure that my house and neighborhood were complete.”
The team brought their own water and pumped water from the pool. “They didn't break into the hydrant,” he said. “That's a big misunderstanding.”
Despite promises not to use scarce public water resources, the leader of California's largest fire department criticized private firefighters in an interview.
“When we see groups like this come in, we don't think of them as an asset, we think of them as a liability,” said Brian Rice, president of the California Professional Firefighters, which represents 35,000 firefighters. I'm thinking about it,” he said.
He said most private fire departments are trained to operate in deep forests, but “the firefighting that's happening in Los Angeles right now is urban firefighting.” “We go from neighborhood to neighborhood.”
“Private contractors are neither trained nor equipped to operate in this environment,” he added.
That doesn't seem to reduce their demand.
Bruce Bromberg of the Blue Ribbon Sushi chain, which has restaurants in Palisades Village, was in Las Vegas when the fire approached the shopping center and watched footage from the restaurant's surveillance camera. When he saw flames on the restaurant's patio Wednesday morning, he called Caruso's team and was told they were “doing everything they could.”
He said the fire was quickly extinguished by one of Caruso's hired water truck drivers.
Blomberg said he had read criticism of Caruso's use of civilian firefighters and called it unfair.
“Rick built a place for the community and defended it for the community,” he said. “He saved these businesses, and if the hydrants were filled with water, he would have saved whatever he could.”
jacob bernstein Contributing reporting from Los Angeles; kitty bennett Contributed to research.
