At the very top of Tuesday, Dec. 4’s Malibu City Council meeting, Mayor Rick Mullen upended the meeting’s agenda to request explanations from officials about decisions made during the Woolsey Fire: What happened to cause a massive traffic jam on Pacific Coast Highway in the middle of a crucial evacuation? Why did residents report a lack of fire response as flames moved through neighborhoods? What was the water district doing to provide much-needed water to western Malibu?
As Malibu struggles to come to terms with the trauma of the Woolsey Fire, these questions, and more like them, have been raised again and again in public forums, meetings and conversations across town. But satisfying responses to these questions have been hard to come by—and after Tuesday’s explanations, many of the hundreds who came to attend the first council meeting following the devastating fire were not satisfied with the response.
Mullen broke the questions into three main topics: the evacuation, the fire response and the allocation of water resources.
Evacuation
Lieutenant Kevin Kurker of the California Highway Patrol’s West Valley office, who was acting commander at the time of the evacuation, described the morning of Nov. 9—beginning with the 14-mile fire front, which caused fire officials to call for a massive mandatory evacuation.
“I received notification of the condition of the Pacific Coast Highway and the traffic. To put it in a more broad scope, everybody in that, as you said, 14-mile zone, or whatever it was, was being evacuated. And there was a very small funnel for thousands of residents and people to get out,” the commander explained. “If you take a funnel of liquid and it has a very small hole, it takes a while for that to come out the other side.”
Kurker, who said he “could not speak” as to whether the road was open heading westbound on PCH toward Ventura, described a coordinated effort among many jurisdictions that allowed for the eventual change in traffic flow that opened all four lanes of PCH to move toward Santa Monica. That effort included CHP together with the City of Santa Monica, the City of Los Angeles and Caltrans, plus the LA County Sheriff’s Department.
“Even with that, with that collaboration going southbound on PCH, now you get to the McClure Tunnel… the first thing we had to do was get the westbound 10 shut down and divert traffic into the city of Santa Monica,” Kurker said. “Then, we had to get off-ramps on the eastbound 10 shut down.” That way, traffic would not back up trying to get to Santa Monica’s surface streets. “Once you get to the McClure Tunnel.. You go from four lanes down to two, and now you have another funnel.” He said that he was impressed that the agencies were able to pull off the complex maneuver, although, “unfortunately, it wasn’t as quick as we wanted it to be.” Some reported trips of five, six and even seven hours to get from the Trancas area into Los Angeles.
Lieutenant Jim Royal of the Malibu/Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station said that “the scale of this was really overwhelming on every level, and [the fire] was moving fast,” but added, “no excuses—there are lessons to be learned.”
One question that remained was why there was no communication with residents about evacuating westbound, toward Ventura County. During the meeting, there were still many who mistakenly believed no vehicles had been allowed to evacuate toward Oxnard and Ventura.
“I evacuated, and as I got on PCH, every car was stuck,” described Dr. Sabine Hazan later during public comment. “I work in Ventura, so I’m like, ‘I’ve got to go to work in Ventura anyway, so I might as well go to Ventura.’ Well, Ventura was wide open. I was actually speeding up [to] Ventura. So, I don’t understand why there was no one going up Ventura … everybody was stuck going southbound [toward] Santa Monica.”
Resident Richard Seinfeld described watching a bus heading toward Santa Monica move “about 100 feet in two hours,” in the traffic jam.
Firefighting
Los Angeles County Fire Department Assistant Chief Anthony Williams—who began with the department in 1978—described what made the Woolsey Fire different from previous wildland fires that burned into Malibu.
Residents have complained that in some areas fire engines simply were nowhere to be seen—an issue Williams acknowledged.
Resources from both Los Angeles County and Cal Fire had been sent up north to battle the Camp Fire, which began a few hours before the Woolsey Fire and burned through the town of Paradise, Calif.
“The priority is based upon the largest potential loss of life. As we all know, the Camp Fire suffered an astronomical loss of life,” Williams described. “Engines and strike teams that were already headed north were not turned around to come back to the Hill Fire. The Hill Fire started requesting resources, and then when our fire started, we were left to do with what we had.” The Hill fire was a smaller fire that also broke out in Ventura County on Thursday, Nov. 8, the afternoon the Woolsey Fire began.
Williams said LA County Fire was able to form 20 strike teams, totalling 100 engines, to go to the Woolsey Fire, but Malibu residents who lived through previous fires would not have seen the response they may have expected.
“There was not the parade of fire engines that we were used to seeing, in [the 2007 Corral Canyon Fire]—in ‘93, when we had the largest concentration and accumulation of fire engines ever—that was not here,” Williams said. “The perception that fire engines were not out there working is incorrect.” A lot of the engines were en route from elsewhere, including where the fire began in Simi.
“We had 57,000 houses in the path of that fire. The expectation that a fire engine would be at each and every residence or every street is unrealistic. We don’t have 57,000 fire engines in the western United States.”
In response to allegations there were fire trucks sitting idly by, Williams simply said, “No, there were no fire engines not doing anything in Los Angeles County.”
Later in the meeting, resident after resident shared first- and second-hand accounts that contradicted Williams.
John Watkin, who lost his home on Cuthbert, described stopping for gas at the 76 Station at Corral Canyon and seeing “eight to 12 fire trucks” parked there.
“I had no gas in my car, so I thought I might get lucky at the Corral Canyon 76 Station. I pulled in there looking for gas,” he recalled. “I saw a sign in there saying ‘No Gas.’ But what I did see was between eight and 12 fire trucks parked on the entrance to Corral Canyon—parked, with firefighters in their driving seats.
“I said to them, ‘What are you guys doing?’” the longtime resident recounted. “They said, ‘Well, we’re waiting to hear some orders.’ I said, ‘Orders? Point Dume is on fire, Busch is on fire. Turn your fire trucks around and get up there are go put the fire out.’ They said, ‘We’re not from this area, can you tell us what the cross street is?’”
“I said, ‘The cross street is PCH and Heathercliff. Go up there, make a left, look for the fire and put it out,’” Watkin said. The audience laughed and applauded, seemingly in solidarity.
“I lost my house on Cuthbert. I don’t think there’s anything we could have done about that. But all my friends on the point … so many people who lost their homes—their home might have been saved if there’d been some organization of these brave firefighters.”
Water
“People have been complaining that the water went out,” Mullen said before asking for details from the local water provider, Los Angeles County Water District 29.
Dave Rydman, an engineer for the district, began his remarks about the district’s fire response by pointing out that Malibu’s potable water system is designed “to provide domestic supply for indoor use and outdoor irrigation,” as well as suppressing structure fires.
“There is not a public system in the world that is designed to fight a wildfire,” Rydman said. “My staff did an incredible job of operating that system to its full potential. We did everything in our power to make sure every tank was as full as it could be when that Edison [power] shut-off was projected to occur.”
Rydman described district staff focusing efforts on keeping water heading into western Malibu, working 12-hour shifts and coordinating with the county, district and Southern California Edison to get generators up and running to keep water pumping after power outages downed the system.
Several members of the public spoke to point out the need for more water tanks in neighborhoods, but there were no questions raised that targeted District 29’s handling of the water situation.