21-05-2025
Exclusive footage: Deadly Palisades Fire may have grown from this Jan. 1 blaze
A newly released video that captures the ignition of the Palisades Fire on Jan. 7 provides further evidence the disastrous Los Angeles County blaze was possibly the rekindling of a fire from days earlier, according to four wildfire investigation experts who reviewed the footage.
The footage, obtained by the Chronicle and made public here for the first time, shows that the two wildfires broke out in very close proximity: the small Lachman Fire on New Year's Day and, six days later, the Palisades, which killed a dozen people and destroyed more than 6,800 structures in Pacific Palisades, Malibu and Topanga.
'You could see from the terrain it was in the same area,' said Tom Pierce, a certified fire investigator who has conducted more than 2,000 fire investigations, after reviewing the new video at the Chronicle's request.
Federal and local investigators collected the footage as evidence in ongoing investigations; the Chronicle received it through a records request.
A witness to the Lachman Fire told the Chronicle he heard and saw what seemed like illegal fireworks — a boom and a flash of light — and minutes later saw the orange glow of flames growing on a hillside. The videos also show flashes of light minutes before the blaze erupts, potentially supporting the belief that fireworks were the original cause.
The new footage, captured by two UC San Diego wildfire cameras, provides a fresh view of the fires, buttressing the rekindle theory, said Terry Taylor, a retired wildland fire investigator who now works as an instructor.
'It falls under the category of a rekindle because you probably have an undiscovered ignition outside the border of the fire,' Taylor said. 'In effect, you already had another fire going, it just didn't go anywhere until the winds kicked up.'
Fire investigators have not determined the cause of either fire. The Los Angeles Fire Department originally reported the Jan. 1 fire as contained around four hours after it started, and a spokesperson said the department left crews at the site for most of the day to mop up. LAFD brought the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in to lead the investigation into the Palisades Fire.
Nicole Lozano, spokesperson at the ATF, declined to comment on the agency's investigation because it is still ongoing and involves 'copious amounts of data.' That includes information agents collected last month during a controlled fire that the LAFD lit near the Palisades Fire's suspected origin to test how fire traveled in the hillside park.
The LAFD didn't respond to multiple requests for comment Monday.
Some of the worst wildfires in U.S. history began with festering embers, including the 1991 Oakland hills fire, which killed 25 people, and the 2023 Maui firestorm that leveled the town of Lahaina.
Embers can smolder out of sight even when a fire appears extinguished on the surface, often burning in the roots underground. In the Oakland firestorm, crews believed they had fully extinguished a 5-acre grass fire — but the flames rekindled the next morning, fueled by gusting winds.
Experts told the Chronicle that while it would be unusual for smoldering embers to survive for six days, it is possible. And conditions in Southern California were far from normal.
The Los Angeles area was unusually parched when the Lachman and Palisades fires broke out. It was the driest winter since recordkeeping began in 1944 at the nearby Los Angeles International Airport, with only 0.03 inches of rain since Oct. 1.
And on Jan. 7, the National Weather Service warned Southern California that a 'life-threatening, destructive and widespread windstorm' could batter the tinder-dry region. Any spark, the agency said, could lead to 'extreme fire behavior.'
Having two fires break out so close in proximity and time is too much of a coincidence, Pierce said.
'It's like lightning striking twice,' he said.
Ed Norskog, who investigated more than 200 wildfires and co-authored the book 'Arson Investigation in the Wildlands,' also reviewed the footage and said it supported the rekindle theory.
'These videos show the fires starting basically in the same spot, give or take a few hundred yards,' Norskog said. 'That's pretty compelling.
'(A rekindle) is entirely possible. The winds were extraordinary,' Norskog said. 'It could rekindle a fire even seven days later. … Any wildland fire investigator will tell you it happens all the time.'
Alan Carlson, a retired Cal Fire deputy chief who worked more than 50 years as a wildland fire investigator, reviewed still photos obtained by the Chronicle in January and immediately became suspicious of a possible rekindle. At the Chronicle's request, Carlson reviewed the new videos this week, and felt they supported his earlier contention.
'If anything, it made me more sure that that theory needed to be explored,' Carlson said of a rekindle igniting Palisades.
The first arriving firefighters on Jan. 7 noted the close proximity of both blazes.
'Started just below the old burn scar' from the Lachman Fire, an LAFD helicopter pilot reported to incident commanders at 10:49 a.m., according to audio reviewed by the Chronicle. Six minutes later, a firefighter with eyes on the advancing flames reported to supervisors: 'The foot of the fire started real close to where the last fire was on New Year's Eve.'
On Jan. 11, just days after the Palisades Fire started, the Chronicle first reported the possibility that the New Year's fire had rekindled.
Neighbors shared photos of both fire origins demonstrating the proximity of the conflagrations. Witnesses also told the Chronicle they saw and heard fireworks in the area in the moments before the Jan. 1 broke out just after midnight. Neighbors had long complained about illegal fireworks in Pacific Palisades.
The Washington Post used satellite imagery to show that the initial phases of the Jan. 7 fire overlapped the Jan. 1 burn scar. The newspaper also spoke to neighbors who witnessed fireworks activity in the area before the flames erupted on New Year's Day.
While fire officials in January downplayed any connection to the New Year's blaze, nearby residents say they have since been questioned by investigators. Don Griffin lives along Piedra Morada Road, south of the fire's origin, and snapped photos depicting the starts of both fires.
'ATF interviewed me and I gave them my photos,' he texted the Chronicle.
Ari Sallus, who spoke with the Chronicle in January and again this week, said he thought he heard fireworks while walking on a trail to an overlook in Topanga State Park behind his family's Pacific Palisades home around midnight on New Year's Eve as fireworks exploded all over Los Angeles County. The night was foggy and the view limited, but he noticed an orange light on a nearby hill. It was a fire, he realized, coming from the direction where he thought he had heard fireworks.
LAFD told the Chronicle the agency was alerted to the Lachman blaze at 12:17 a.m. Sallus said he stayed up most of the night watching. He returned to the area on Jan. 2 to walk around the burn scar, which was 'still smoldering,' said Sallus, who remembered that it 'still smelled like smoke.'
He noticed that areas around the burned dirt remained thick with tinder-dry brush after about eight months with hardly any rain. He wondered why firefighters hadn't remained at the scene while it seemed so risky — and why no firefighters returned Jan. 7 when the Santa Ana winds battered the Los Angeles hills.
'You knew the winds were coming — that wasn't a surprise,' Sallus said. 'There could have been a fire truck there.'
Carlson, the retired Cal Fire investigator, reviewed Sallus' photos and said they showed evidence of 'heavy water use' by firefighters and also some concerning spots where burned material was not scattered to prevent hot materials from nesting.
The fire department told the Chronicle in January that crews used hoses to 'blast' water into the dirt and stir it up to extinguish any embers burning under the surface. After working on the site most of the day, the last LAFD units left the area at 4:14 p.m. on Jan. 1, a spokesperson said.
Sallus said a Los Angeles city fire investigator reached out to him in February to ask about the location of the Jan. 1 fire's origin. Sallus, currently a student in London, spoke with the city investigator on Zoom and said he was surprised that the later Palisades Fire was not mentioned as part of the inquiry. He sent the investigator a series of photos that he'd taken that night.
'That was it,' Sallus said. 'That was the whole conversation.'
In January, UC San Diego, which operates the AlertCalifornia statewide system of wildfire cameras, denied the Chronicle's public records request for footage of the Jan. 1 and Jan. 7 fire starts, saying that 'interest in not disrupting ongoing investigations is greater than the interest of the public.' The Chronicle fought the ruling and UCSD released the footage last week. The only redactions in the video are pixelations to residential and 'developed areas,' the university explained.
All the videos are recorded from trailhead cameras affixed to a water tank just above the Summit neighborhood on the northern border of Pacific Palisades.
The two cameras are part of the AlertCalifornia network of 1,150 cameras across the state. One maintained a single view, while the second operated in 'patrol mode,' in which the camera rotates 360 degrees, completing one orbit every two minutes. In each orbit, the camera snaps a dozen images.
Because of the rotations, the initial images of the Jan. 1 fire show the key angle in time-lapse, each frame jumping two minutes from the previous. Approximately 22 minutes before midnight on Dec. 31, a flash of light is shown near the trailhead, lighting up a nearby palm tree. The experts told the Chronicle it could be the launching of a firework, or something entirely innocuous, like a headlight of a car. Because the video frames are two minutes apart, it's hard to discern, they said.
'There's some type of human activity going on at that spot,' Pierce said.
Six minutes later, the footage captures a flash of light midway up the hillside among a thicket of tall chaparral bushes, potentially from a firework ember cast, two experts said. Sallus also indicated this was the general location where he spotted the flash of fireworks on Jan. 1.
The first flash of flames came to life in the video 13 minutes after midnight. The camera — equipped with technology to detect wildfires — noticed the unusual activity, stopped its rotation and homed in on the fire growing larger with homes nearby.
Firefighters stopped that blaze, but the same wouldn't be true six days later.
On Jan. 7, billowing smoke triggered the camera to halt its 360-degree vigilance and focus on signs of fire on the brush-covered hillside. The smoke rose higher as clouds raced across a blue sky.
Soon the whole hillside was ablaze.
