A week after the Palisades Fire raced down a mountainside, engulfing entire communities and killing at least eight peopleits cause remains unknown.
The answers, when they emerge, will most likely lie on a scorched and blackened ridgeline in West Los Angeles, overlooking a Pacific Palisades neighborhood that includes a popular hiking trail — an area that has also been the scene from a small fire six days earlier.
Understand the catastrophic fire of January 7 It could take months, a process that began as investigators collected video and photographs from neighboring homes and social media, interviewed witnesses and firefighters and reviewed 911 calls, looking for leads.
“All of this is going to take time,” Jose Medina, acting special agent in charge of the Los Angeles office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said at a news conference. Tuesday. He said 75 federal and local investigators were handling the case. “We know everyone wants answers and the community deserves answers. The ATF will give you those answers, but that will be after we have completed a thorough investigation. We have no timetable for when this will happen.
Investigators have reached no conclusions, although the investigation initially focused on potential human causesaccording to several police sources close to the investigation. Possibilities include arson, accidental sparking, fireworks, unauthorized camping activity or the resumption of a previously extinguished fire on New Year’s Day, the sources said.
The investigation led investigators to the ash-covered area where the fire was first spotted, searching for any clues.
Wind-driven forest fires like the Palisades Fire, they leave “movement patterns” on plants, trees, grass, rocks and other objects that, to the trained eye, reveal how the flames spread. By marking these signs, investigators work backwards to the suspected starting point.
“If you understand how to read these diagrams, it quickly becomes obvious where the origin of the fire is,” said Ed Nordskog, a retired Los Angeles County sheriff’s fire investigator who is not involved in the Palisades fire investigation.
Investigators try to limit their search to an area of about 25 square feet, then turn the location into a grid of areas of about 4 square feet each, Nordskog said. Using magnets, metal detectors and magnifying glasses, they search for tiny objects – like fragments of melting machine parts, a match head, glass, remnants of fireworks – that could explain or exclude a potential cause. They can bring in a dog trained to detect traces of accelerants. Nearby electrical equipment, such as fences or posts, or signs for gas-powered vehicles also guide them. Meanwhile, other investigators are speaking with witnesses who may have seen something suspicious.
The ATF National Response Team is conducting a joint investigation with local authorities into the Palisades Fire, as well as other fires that broke out last week in Los Angeles County, fueled by violent winds ravaged mountain slopes and neighborhoods, destroying more than 12,000 structures. consuming more than 40,000 acres and killing at least 25 people. Some fires are still burning.
The Palisades fire, which is the largest, may be the hardest to explain because of the myriad potential factors that investigators will need to eliminate to determine the cause.
The theory that the January 1 fire was responsible has sparked the most public speculation.
This brush fire ignited in the ridgeline area shortly after midnight, spotted by residents of the nearby Palisades Highlands neighborhood, part of Pacific Palisades. The firefighters put it out, and before 5 a.m. it was deemed contained with no structures damaged and no one injured. The city’s firefighters did not specify the cause of this incident.
The fire was largely forgotten until six days later.
On January 7, around 8:20 a.m., Darrin Hurwitz began his usual hike on a mountainside trail near his home in the Marquez Knolls neighborhood. It was very windy – authorities had already issued a warning that the gusts put Los Angeles at high fire risk.
An hour into the hike, as he passed a rock known as Skull Rock, he said, he noticed a swath of charred vegetation and smelled a whiff of smoke. Remembering the New Year’s Eve fire, Hurwitz said he didn’t think much of it, assuming the smell of it remained — or that he detected fires burning elsewhere, far away.
Hurwitz, 49, an attorney, said he stopped about a few hundred yards from the burn scar and saw no smoke or anything else notable. “It wasn’t enough to think there was something suspicious,” he said. Hours later, his family escaped the fire that ravaged the neighborhood, but their home was destroyed.
Mid-morning, a group of trail runners I saw flames and smoke near Skull Rock and ran away, taking photos and videos as they fled to safety. Palisades Highlands residents said they saw the fire spreading from their homes around 10:30 a.m.
Having two fires in roughly the same area, six days apart, fueled speculation that the Palisades fire was sparked by a resurgence of the previous one. But experts are divided on whether this explanation is viable. A 2023 wildfire that destroyed the town of Lahaina on the Hawaiian island of Maui was found to be the result of a wildfire. rekindling of a smaller fire, even though only a few hours separated these fires.
For days or weeks after a fire, embers can lodge somewhere and stay hot — and tree roots can burn underground, Nordskog said. This effect is often seen in mountain forests, and it is not common in coastal scrub like the Pacific Palisades, he said. But it’s possible, he said.
Scott Sweetow, a former ATF fire investigator, said he doubted that happened in this case.
The relatively light vegetation of the Pacific Palisades landscape and the six-day period before the second fire made refueling “incredibly unlikely,” he said.
