Audit Explains Why Fire Trucks Stood Idle As Malibu Houses Burned

Now .. analysis of the Woolsey Fire after action report.

LA County hired an outside auditor to review the fire department’s actins during Woolsey.

The Woolsey Fire was 97,949 acres. 

The 2003 Old Topanga Fire was 16,516 acres.

– Fire of this size and speed had never been experienced or planned for.

– “The expectation of round the clock electrical power and internet connectivity became a myth.”

– Social media has led public to expect real time information, but no system to deliver that exists.

Sheriff’s department operations … however … were largely not addressed.

One major point of furious anger in Malibu.

Trucks parked on the side of P C H… awaiting orders … while houses burned in nearby neighborhoods.

Here’s why … according to the report.
When the fire overran the fire department … on the other side of the mountains … along the 101 Freeway … a command went out on radios.

No more defending structures …concentrate only on saving lives.

The fire department’s Tony Imbrenda says … in essence … burning houses were ignored … because so many people stayed behind in Malibu to fight the fire. … 

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“Life protection being our number one priority … it we have a situation like we did in the Woolsey Fire that were still had a lot of folks .. a lot of citizens … in the operational area as the fire was approaching.

“The command was given for our companies to make the effort to make the effort to make sure that the evacuation was priority number one.

“To get citizens out way of the fire before it approached the area.

“And that is what our posture was.”

But that led to frantic residents … begging for help … being turned down as houses began to go up in flames.

The report says some unit commanders may have misinterpreted the order … and the fire department is now stressing to unit commanders that they do have the common sense authority to respond to immediate property threat … if they deploy lightly and can move to rescue people as needed.

But the report emphasizes that  “The public has a perception that public agencies can always protect them.

“As an incident the size of the Woolsey Fire shows, this is not always possible. The public has a shared responsibility for preparedness…”

Among major findings:

– Ventura County only sent 2 firetrucks and 1 bulldozer to the Woolsey Fire as it broke out.  Its resources were consumed with the Hill Fire … that started earlier that day between Thousand Oaks and Camarillo.

LA city and LA county were left to battle the fire, which started in Ventura County.

• During the first two days of the Woolsey Fire, 53 percent of the requests for fire engine mutual aid requests were unfilled.
• “That equals a staggering 874 reports,” the analysis says.
• No fire units were pulled from LA, Santa Barbara, Orange or Ventura counties for Nor Calif duty prior to the Woolsey Fire.
• Pleas for fire trucks to be send to Malibu were ignored for 21-1/2 hours.
• Fire bosses asked for 1600 fire trucks and only got half that many.
• Other Southern California fire agencies kept their trucks at home, knowing they were on their own … due to the fires in Northern California and a breakdown in the mutual aid system.
• That mutual aid system was already exhausted Thursday night, before the Woolsey Fire had grown.
• County fire could not have planned for a scenario combination of a mass shooting in neighboring TO, major fire breaking out in Camarillo, central/northern California resources locked into 80-plus fatals in Paradise.
• Ground crews worked 36-48 hours with no sleep.
• There was (and is) no prepared traffic evacuation plans for the Woolsey area.
• Need identified for regional evacuation and repopulation plans.
• Woolsey cost $52 million to put out, air ops alone cost $7.7 million.
• 911 was overloaded with 1,800 additional calls for help from within the fire zone, on top of the 1,100 normal calls.
• Woolsey got 8 choppers and 2 Superscoopers when it broke out, but only 2 CDF retardant plane drops. They were tied up with Hill Fire in Camarillo.

Back to the LA County fire spokesman … Tony Imbrenda.

Lessons learned … to be sure … he says

But he says this report is a shows firefighters did their jobs.

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“I honestly believe when we look back in this through history … it will go down as one of the great successes in the history of the American fire service.

“We are talking about an area (of) 250 thousand residents evacuated we had 57 thousand structures at risk.

“And really if you look at what was protected versus what was lost … which I never would want to minimize … there was an enormous success that arose out of this.

“But … points to learn and points to improve … will never go away.”