The Los Angeles Fire Department acknowledged it missed warning signs before the Palisades fire and failed in parts of its initial response.

The fire killed 12 people and destroyed more than 6,800 structures. The LAFD's admission, in a statement to the Los Angeles Times on Friday, Oct. 2, came after the release of a 724-page independent investigation commissioned by Gov. Gavin Newsom. The probe was conducted by UL Research Institutes' Fire Safety Research Institute (FSRI).

The LAFD said it accepts the report's findings and identified areas where it needs to improve, including confirming fires are fully extinguished before dangerous weather returns, tracking every unit on a major fire and coordinating evacuations with partner agencies.

The statement contrasts with the department's earlier stance. In October 2025, an LAFD public information officer posted on social media that "holdover fires" like the Lachman fire are "extremely difficult to detect," according to the Times.

What the investigation found

The FSRI report detailed a department that ignored multiple warnings that the Jan. 1, 2025, Lachman fire was still smoldering days before it exploded into the Palisades fire on Jan. 7, 2025. The LAFD had no comprehensive procedure to confirm such fires were fully out.

Once the Palisades fire erupted, up to 26 LAFD units deployed without the knowledge of incident command. The command post had to relocate three times as fleeing residents and eventually the fire itself overran its positions.

LAFD leaders who initially oversaw the response lacked experience with large, complicated fires, the report found. That caused other agencies to operate independently rather than joining a unified command. The LAFD and the Los Angeles Police Department, which handled evacuations, worked from different evacuation maps without realizing it until late on Jan. 7.

Derek Alkonis, FSRI senior research program manager, described conditions facing fire officials before the blaze. "The whole system was, in a sense, just boiling," Alkonis said at a press briefing ahead of the report's release.

The LAFD pre-deployed only a few extra crews as critical fire weather approached. That decision "compromised the city's initial and extended response, and further compromised the region" as neighboring departments picked up the slack, the report found.

Internal report was softened

The FSRI investigation is not the first review of the fire response. The LAFD released its own 70-page after-action report on Oct. 8, 2025. But that document drew scrutiny.

Fire Chief Jaime Moore told the Fire Commission in late August that "multiple drafts were edited to soften language and reduce explicit criticism of the department leadership," as reported by the Santa Monica Daily Press.

That earlier report did not analyze the Lachman fire response in detail.

What has changed

Since Mayor Karen Bass appointed Moore to lead the department, the LAFD said it has implemented 92% of the recommendations from its own after-action report. The department said it has put new post-containment procedures in place, using drones and thermal imaging to confirm a fire is fully out.

The FSRI report recommended the LAFD build a culture that empowers firefighters to flag hot spots and unsafe conditions to supervisors and that those concerns be resolved before crews leave an assignment.

Many fire survivors have joined lawsuits against the City of Los Angeles. A lead attorney announced in August 2026 that the city agreed to enter settlement talks expected to begin in early October 2026.