This past Saturday afternoon, LA County Fire Chief Daryl Osby and others from the top echelons of the LA County Fire Department came to Malibu City Hall to explain, in front of a packed house, what happened during the Woolsey Fire. They explained what they did, what they didn’t do and what they couldn’t do in the fire, which swept through Malibu and its immediate environs, wiping out over 700 homes. It was difficult because many who lost their homes were angry, felt let down and wanted someone to blame; there was a lot of blame to go around.
A bunch of known facts emerged from the meeting—and a few that were new. Clearly, the Woolsey Fire was big, burned on a broad front of about 14-15 miles and moved from its origin in upper Ventura County to the Pacific in a record time—about 24 hours. What was apparent—there weren’t enough men, engine companies or airplanes to fight the fire, principally because there were three giant fires going simultaneously: the Camp Fire in Northern California that killed 88 people and virtually wiped out Paradise, Calif.; the Hill Fire in Ventura County; and the Woolsey Fire in both Ventura and LA counties.
Osby said that typically, by November, Northern California has rain and snow and their fire danger is over, but not this time. The combination of climate change and six years of drought has changed that picture, and all the engine companies that previously may have been available to go into Southern California were still engaged in Northern California.
It was apparent that here, in the Valley, they massed almost all of their more limited resources to try and stop the fire at the 101 Freeway, which is a natural firebreak, but they couldn’t hold it. Once the fire broke through, they found themselves behind the fire and chasing it. The problem was phone poles and power lines were down, which blocked and delayed much of the equipment from going south to Malibu.
As they talked, it also became apparent there were some major mistakes made in this fire and some of their strategy simply didn’t work. Most in the audience, I believe, understood the magnitude of that fire and the overwhelming problems in fighting it. What they couldn’t understand was why, when the fire came into Malibu neighborhoods—both city and county—the limited number of engines that were here wouldn’t or couldn’t engage. There were too many people who had direct encounters with fire teams that would not move into Pt. Dume, Malibu West, Malibu Park and many other neighborhoods as homes were burning. The teams said they couldn’t go without orders, but those orders never came or were not carried out. Time, and some exhaustive investigation, will tell us what actually went wrong, but nothing that was said at the Saturday meeting could explain the lack of response in the neighborhoods. Frankly, I don’t think the fire department knows yet why those engines didn’t come into the neighborhoods.
There is something else going on, which I call the cult of professionalism. It’s a belief that appears to run through both the fire department and the sheriff’s department in which only they, the professionals, can handle these events and the civilians should stay the hell out of the way. The problem with that belief is that it’s only correct when you have enough equipment, firefighters, water supply and a flexible command structure on the scene and my perception is they didn’t have any of that. Where they did have volunteers were places like Corral Canyon, where people who spent time training, bought equipment to help protect the neighborhood and had an organized neighborhood command structure had their fire engine confiscated by some fire captain and then left unused. Despite that, they managed to save many neighborhood homes in Corral Canyon. It was neighbors who stayed behind that saved the homes and not the fire department.
Lastly, the evacuation seemed to be a quick decision to try and get everyone out of the uncertain path of the fire. It was both a success and a failure. It succeeded in that it moved a quarter of a million people out of the area in an incredibly short period of time. It failed in that thousands of people were crawling in bumper-to-bumper traffic and no sheriff’s sergeant seemed to have the authority to open even the center lane so that the evacuation could take place among three lanes instead of two.
The same with the numerous roadblocks. Someone issued blanket orders not to let people in or allow them to leave and return to their neighborhoods. They wouldn’t let in doctors, private fire equipment, food or people trying to rescue elders or the infirm. Their hands were tied by someone in the command structure when they should have had the authority to adapt to conditions. Remember the picture we ran of a large yacht that brought in supplies to those that stayed behind in Malibu? They were forced to unload the supplies onto surfboards because officials wouldn’t let them a use a small boat or raft to unload.
A last caveat: It’s easy to be a Monday morning quarterback. The game is over and you already know what happened. In real time, a lot of decisions have to be made with incomplete information, little time to clarify and the fog of war or fire impacting everything. I know fire can be unpredictable because the winds are unpredictable, but still, we’ve got to do better in the future.