Thirteen years ago, Los Angeles Fire Department officials were bracing for dangerous winds that could blow flames over hillsides and canyons and sweep into communities from Malibu to Pacific Palisades to the San Fernando Valley.

The National Weather Service has issued a red flag warning of apocalyptic wind gusts reaching 90 miles per hour. Forecasters describe the coming storm as a once-in-five-to-ten-year disaster.

So the Los Angeles Fire Department began marshalling its defenses in the days leading up to the high winds, taking the kind of dramatic steps the department failed to take last week before the Palisades fire, which became severe or This is more serious because there has been no rain recently compared to late November 2011.

As the storm was expected to hit on Dec. 1 of that year, Los Angeles Fire Department commanders ordered at least 40 additional firefighting vehicles for stations closest to areas hardest hit by the fires, such as the Palisade, The Times learned through interviews and internal department records. car.

Records and interviews show that more than 20 of the additional fire engines were pre-deployed to the stations, along with 18 "backup" engines used to supplement regular firefighting forces during such emergencies.

"We couldn't take any chances because the stakes were too high," said the former Los Angeles Fire Department aide. Chief Patrick Butler, now chief of the Redondo Beach Fire Department, led the agency's preparations in 2011.

Butler said the Los Angeles Fire Department commander who oversaw the deployment before the Jan. 7 Palisades fire should have been similarly prepared.

"Even though the weather service declared this a life-threatening wind event, they underestimated the threat," he said. "In my 35 years in firefighting, I have never heard the weather service use these words. This is It’s a flashing danger sign.”

The weather service said January 7 and the following day could bring the strongest winds since that period in 2011. The warning is even more dire because a lack of rainfall in recent months has left the badlands particularly dry, Ryan Kittell said. Weather Service Meteorologist.

“The plants are very dry and the wind is very strong — it’s the worst combination,” Kittel said.

As the Times reported last week, the Los Angeles Fire Department decided not to use its dozens of available engines to fight any wind-driven fires. A document obtained by The Times shows commanders said "no" to deploying nine backup engines to supplement the nine pre-positioned in the Valley and Hollywood the morning before the fire.

Officials said they moved more engines "first thing in the morning" to cover northeast Los Angeles. No additional engines were shipped to the Palisades.

The department also chose not to require its roughly 1,000 firefighters to take shifts instead of going home hours before a fire broke out. The decision made it more difficult to quickly staff unused engines after the fire began to get out of control, a former chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department told The Times.

Fire Chief Kristin Crowley and other top officials defended their decisions, saying they had to juggle limited resources while continuing to respond to non-fire-related 911 calls due to high winds elsewhere in the city. Destruction, the number of fires doubled on the day the fire started on January 7. . Los Angeles Fire Department officials also claimed firefighting efforts were hampered by budget constraints and low water levels in some hydrants.

"We follow the system. We surge where we can surge," Crowley said at a news conference on Wednesday. "Our firefighters rushed in and they did their best."

But the department faced the same challenge in 2011, but that didn't stop commanders from putting more engines into the fire zone before high winds blew into the city, according to records and interviews.

In fact, the high winds downed power lines and trees and caused other damage, but did not spark any wildfires. Butler said he considered his preparations for such a dire wind forecast in 2011 to be routine, and that he had taken similar preemptive measures on about 30 other occasions during his years at LAFD.

In most cases, a fire doesn't break out, but Butler said commanders can't bet on that outcome. He cited the Los Angeles Fire Department's long-standing directive for commanders to take all necessary measures to extinguish brush fires "firmly and quickly."

Former Los Angeles Fire Department Battalion Chief Rick Crawford told The Times he would take the same approach to last week's wind threat as Butler did in 2011. Crawford spent 33 years with the department, including serving as a captain at the Los Angeles Fire Department Operations Center before leaving in 2024. He currently serves as the U.S. Capitol Emergency and Crisis Management Coordinator.

He said the department should have equipped at least 25 more engines the morning before the Palisades fire and moved other engines to potential fire areas. Crawford said looking back on the departure of firefighters that day, more crews could have been deployed.

"I'll be more aggressive," he added.

With the high winds, he said, "There was going to be a fire that day. But was it going to be just as deadly? Was it going to be the most destructive in the history of Los Angeles? I don't think so.

“Give yourself the best chance to minimize the damage.”

Crowley did not respond to a request for an interview for this article. She and a spokesperson also did not respond to a series of written questions from The Times about the Los Angeles Fire Department’s preparedness for and response to the Palisades fire.

When asked about the planning decision at a press conference on Wednesday, Mayor Karen Bass admitted "the buck is always on me" but deferred the question to Crawley. Bass’s press office did not respond to an email requesting an interview with her for this story.

Richard Fields, the deputy chief responsible for staffing and equipment decisions before the Palisades fire, defended his deployment plan as "appropriate for immediate response." Asked whether preparations were stronger in 2011, he said the department had a larger fleet of engines it could operate at that time.

"Today, I have zero reserve fleet," Fields said. "Zero because we have a lot of equipment that is in poor repair."

However, the New York Times found that the department had a fleet of more than 40 engines available to crews, and officials chose to staff only five of them before the fire.

Known internally as 200-series engines, they are, like the others, placed around cities, often paired with hook-and-ladder trucks that don't haul water. In non-emergency situations, they are manned by an engineer. When needed to respond to wildfires, they carry four firefighters.

Crowley said that in a "perfect world," she would staff the backup engines, but budget cuts slashed half of the Los Angeles Fire Department's machinist positions, leaving many without work.

But officials said only two of the nine spare engines listed in planning documents — which officials were on record to say “no” to deploying — have been taken out of service and need to be replaced. Seven of them were commissioned at different times, mostly after the fire. Some people were pulled from repair shops.

Fire officials said 40 of the LAFD's 195 total engines were damaged when the Palisades fire broke out. If they were repaired, things might be different, they said.

Butler and other former Los Angeles Fire Department chiefs said that doesn't explain why the department isn't staffing and deploying all available Series 200 engines.

"The engines in the shop just didn't perform as well as they could have done," Butler said.

Officials estimate the Palisades Fire has burned nearly 24,000 acres and destroyed more than 3,500 homes and other structures. At least 10 people died in the fire, according to the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office and Sheriff's Department.

The Eaton Fire, which started on the heels of the Palisades Fire in the Altadena area, has blackened more than 14,000 acres, destroyed about 9,000 homes and other structures and killed 17 people, officials said.

"It's important to learn from this and not repeat the same mistakes," Butler said of the command's decision. "I assure you that despite all of these challenges, the firefighters on the ground are still giving 100 percent."